Neighbour weedkillered my garden

[Salsa]

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

 

[Salsa]

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

 

[Salsa]

Find a local pig farmer and get some pig muck, make nice big heap of it right next to your neighbours, make sure the wind is blowing in the right direction.

They will love it.

Thats actualy not a bad shout, I think I'll move my compost bins to the back corner of the garden, right next to their deck...

I made a call to the council today to see if they had any advice. Not much I can do about the weedkiller other than speak to them, but they were more interested in the soakaway and deck at the bottom of neighbours garden.

If they've altered the natural runoff then might be grounds to lodge a complaint and their deck could be outside permitted development if its over 50cm above the natural ground level which I think it is as we can clearly see them over the fence when they're on the deck...

Going to get some pictures and send over to planning dept for some further advice. Would probably still mean going the legal route which I'd rather not do but good to know where I stand if I want to be really awkward.

/Salsa