Complaints about state of garden

arknor said:
plant some japanese knotweed
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Haha, this, watch your student contract become the least of your worries :D

Do you honestly need advice on how to weed a garden?

If you're adverse to spending money then your only option is to pull them all out by hand before they seed and you get more.

Otherwise £15 of weed killer and a couple of doses.
 
Phantom Shadow said:
So I am currently renting a student flat, and yesterday we had a viewing of the flat by a letting agency advertising the property on behalf of our landlord (which is a letting agency/company itself anyway), and then today we get an email stating that there have been "complaints from local residents regarding the upkeep of the front and rear garden". Seems very convenient timing if you ask me... considering we have lived here for 2 years, the garden is in the same state as last summer I think they would have complained before now. Clearly the guy showing people through the flat passed on a message about the garden.

Fair enough, both front and rear garden are quite overgrown with stinging nettles and could do with sorting out, and it has been pointed out that we are required to maintain the garden in the contract. However the contract does also state that we can't actually do anything about the overgrowth. This is an exact copy from our contract, spelling mistake of weeks/weeds and all.



Now I'm not trying to weedle my way out of sorting out the garden, but it did make me wonder whether they can actually force us to do any gardening, considering it would be difficult to fix the problem (stinging nettles being plants, and not in a paved area) without cutting/injuring/removing them.

Also what would be the best way of dealing with them? I'm planning to email the landlord over the weekend to confirm what is expected, and then just head down to B&Q for some gloves and just rip the stinging nettles out if he confirms that's what he wants doing. Not bothered about stopping them from returning, we move out in a couple of months so as long as the garden is an acceptable standard when we leave it isn't my problem if they grow back.

Incase you missed it, I am planning to clean up the garden, I'm just interested as to how enforceable it is given the contract clause above.
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nettles are weeds theyre in the borders in the contract you gotta remove them.
 
Clearly the contract states to clear away weeds. I wasn't contesting that. It also says I can't remove any plants from the garden, which sounds a bit contradictory to me.

Regardless of that, I think we've had enough 'clean the garden' comments. The garden will be cleaned. It's only just got to the point of needing cleaning anyway as they've come back lately with the recent nice weather. You can have clean garden pics later in the week if you really want.

Something which I may be able to get a better answer for though. The bushes from next door are growing over the top of the fence to our side. Am I fine to trim this back to the fence since it's on our side? I would expect so, but not actually being our bushes I wasn't sure.
 
Phantom Shadow said:
Clearly the contract states to clear away weeds. I wasn't contesting that. It also says I can't remove any plants from the garden, which sounds a bit contradictory to me.
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It's telling you not to allow weeds to grow in the first place and not to damage the existing plants and shrubs that are there.
 
Phantom Shadow said:
Something which I may be able to get a better answer for though. The bushes from next door are growing over the top of the fence to our side. Am I fine to trim this back to the fence since it's on our side? I would expect so, but not actually being our bushes I wasn't sure.
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If they are over on your side then you can cut them back to the perimeter.
 
Jokester said:
It's telling you not to allow weeds to grow in the first place and not to damage the existing plants and shrubs that are there.
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Stinging nettles were there when we moved in, though not quite a thick as they are now and disappeared over winter. Though I probably forgot to note this on the inventory so will make sure any new growth of weeds are also removed upon moving out.

Suppose the main question is, do weeds count as plants in law? From a bit of googling it seems weeds aren't a separate thing in themselves, just types of plant that no one wants around. Not that any of that would relate to the law. I'd expect not as the tone of the clause it fairly clear that they want weeds gone, trees left alone. Just thought the wording seemed a bit ambiguous.
 
Phantom Shadow said:
Suppose the main question is, do weeds count as plants in law? From a bit of googling it seems weeds aren't a separate thing in themselves, just types of plant that no one wants around. Not that any of that would relate to the law. I'd expect not as the tone of the clause it fairly clear that they want weeds gone, trees left alone. Just thought the wording seemed a bit ambiguous.
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Lol really? It's clear you haven't kept it tidy, it'll take an afternoon if that to clear it out, stop fannying around and get on with it this weekend.
 
Phantom Shadow said:
Suppose the main question is, do weeds count as plants in law? From a bit of googling it seems weeds aren't a separate thing in themselves, just types of plant that no one wants around. Not that any of that would relate to the law. I'd expect not as the tone of the clause it fairly clear that they want weeds gone, trees left alone. Just thought the wording seemed a bit ambiguous.
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Seriously?
 
Phantom Shadow said:
Stinging nettles were there when we moved in, though not quite a thick as they are now and disappeared over winter. Though I probably forgot to note this on the inventory so will make sure any new growth of weeds are also removed upon moving out.

Suppose the main question is, do weeds count as plants in law? From a bit of googling it seems weeds aren't a separate thing in themselves, just types of plant that no one wants around. Not that any of that would relate to the law. I'd expect not as the tone of the clause it fairly clear that they want weeds gone, trees left alone. Just thought the wording seemed a bit ambiguous.
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You're starting to sound like the many "law students" who started trying to recite various acts of law every time I kicked them out of the SU for being so drunk they could hardly stand.

Get some weed killer spray it leave it a week and spend a couple of hours ripping the dead weeds out, job done.
 
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