Neighbour weedkillered my garden

Salsa

Salsa

Salsa

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So about a week ago I noticed some brown patches appearing in in the grass adjacent to our back border. A daybor so later leaves on some of the shrubs and flowers in the border began yellowing.

Upon closer inspection it seems our lovely neighbours have sprayed industrial quantities of weedkiller all along the bottom of their fence where they have a large area of stone chippings as a sort of soakaway. Beause their garden is raised above ours this not only has the overspray come through the fence onto our border, but has run off into the border and drainage along our back fence. Everything within 1m of the fence line is dead or dying.

Is there any recourse here? I went round to politely ask what they'd used (I suspect Glyphosate) so I knew how long until I could replant. They could not have been less interested so Im wondering what, if any, recourse I have here and how long I should leave it until replanting?

Anyone had similar issues with overspray of weedkiller before?

Its frustrating since I've spent 4 years getting our garden into a reasonable state and its been undone in a weekend bybsheer ignorance.

/Salsa
 
I'd be royally ****** off too, but I doubt there's any sort of recourse.

I'm not even sure you could partition the soil to prevent it happening again in the future. Maybe an area just for potted plants?
 
Having spent years and many many pounds making our garden a plant and insect delight, I'd be absolutely mad if our neighbours did something so reckless as to nuke everything on the border.
 
Did they admit what they'd done? Did they tell you what they'd used?

Did you ask them if they could not do it again and did they agree?

There's no easy recourse unfortunately short of asking them not to do it again. It's not going to be worth falling out with them over. If they were decent people they would have offered to compensate you.
 
radderfire said:
Did they admit what they'd done? Did they tell you what they'd used?

Did you ask them if they could not do it again and did they agree?

There's no easy recourse unfortunately short of asking them not to do it again. It's not going to be worth falling out with them over. If they were decent people they would have offered to compensate you.
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This. Details of the conversation are needed.
 
That sucks, majorly. If this ends up the beginning of a neighbourly feud then i can only suggest repainting the fence with a spray gun, and try your best to not get it everywhere, but accidents happen :p
 
What utter throbbers you have for neighbours. I’ve just recently had to use high strength weed killer to tame weeds behind my shed that borders the neighbours. I was insanely careful not to overspray or saturate the area in case it leeched into the neighbours side (and theirs is only mossy ‘grass ) even though I’d already spoken to them and said I’d repair any damage should there be any (they laughed and told me to not be so silly!)
 
I did go round and speak to them, politely asked if they'd sprayed anything recently along the fence because our plants and grass had started to die off which was strange given it was Summer.

Monosyllabic neigbour just grunted that her husband had been in the garden last weekend but didn't know what he did. I explained it looked as if he'd sprayed weedkiller and asked if she could ask him when he was around so I knew when it'd be safe to replant and reseed the grass. Another grunt "its just grass and he wouldnt have sprayed your garden".

We've had problems before when they spent a sunmer flooding our garden by just emptying their lazy spa and paddling pool onto their plastic garden which, because they're uphill from us and have a huge gravel soakaway next to their grey plastic deck at the bottom of their garden, created a lovely temporary people soup pond in our garden each time.

That I could sort of live with, but killing a 50ft border (im hoping at least some of the shrubs survive) has really irked me. I've done some googling and it seems that it's a civil matter and I wont get much luck. Since I dont think I'd manage to curl one through their letter box and boxing stance isn't my style I'm mainly just posting on here to vent and see if anyone aware of any regulations around the overspray of weedkiller.

/Salsa
 
I would really look at potting a number of shrubs/plants. It's unlikely when they're established that a bit of overspray will do any significant damage, but if they're saturating the ground with weed killer then that will soak through to your side as is the case here. The pots will protect against that.
 
Gav_r26 said:
Just a thought, but if you go down the legal route, wont you have to declare it if you ever come to sell, potential effecting the sale?
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This. I feel for you OP. I would be furious. But from the sounds of them, it is something which would likely be more hassle than it is worth to you, getting into any sort of legal battle over it. Maybe try and speak to "him" next time you see him rather than her.

This is why when I move, we are going somewhere in the middle of nowhere with no neighbours. People = ****, as Slipknot once said.
 
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