Leylandii disaster

Works an absolute treat on old Ivy - pepper the trunk with them and when the extreme leaves wilt carefully pull it from the wall. Sue had a 2metre high dry stone wall riddled with it along 10metres. It never grew back from the wall or the stump, which had at least a hundred of them in it after I cut it back to the ground. The trunk was 12/13cm thick.

 

It's a lack of communication - she knows nothing about gardening or how these plants behave. She thought I was going to give them a bit of a trim, I thought she was happy to let me take them out. She doesn't understand why these trees are not really suitable for trimming.

Funnily enough her neighbour on the other side had let about 6 of these trees go skyward - fortunately on my North side so they didn't bother me too much. When he died they had to be removed before the house could be sold - I think she can remember those so no doubt she will calm down soon.

Many thanks for all your kind words, they have cheered me up a bit. Let's hope I won't be hearing from her solicitors........

 

Heh, heh. Well, there's mainly self-interest there, of course, because now all my plants in that area will grow so much better. I also enjoy a nice bit of lumberjacking though I'm aching a bit today!

I also took the opportunity to cut down all the brambles that are bouncing across her "lawn" towards my garden, should slow them down by a few months.

 

Leylandi should be banned. Anybody who plants them is a short sighted idiot.

 

I agree, Lakeside. Too many people buy Leylandii without realising that they will grow into monsters unless they are tamed, or that they can't regenerate from old wood - meaning that late remedial action always produces an eyesore. It's amazing that such a pug-ugly plant so often provokes strong feelings in owners who somehow feel that their oversized babies are being unfairly condemned.

My guess is that nothing more will be said, Madahlia. This is just silly territorial behaviour. But if you get any hassle, explain that the trees were becoming unstable and you have thus saved your neighbours from a very large bill. If there's one thing which non-gardeners fear, it's the thought of bad-ass greenery destroying their investment in bricks and mortar. My parents in law had to put up with a neighbour's untamed leylandii growing right on the boundary of their garden. The trees were huge, but had surprisingly weedy root systems. One night, high winds brought them down, demolishing both the greenhouse and the garden shed. So all you have done is to nip a potential disaster in the bud.

 

I agree, but its fine if it is clipped regularly, and without fail. There are some very smart Leylandii hedges near me ... but I would not have started with leylandii in order to get a smart hedge like they have (and many of them have the Leylandii Bug now, and are going brown - good-job-too!)

 

fully agree .... there should be a law that does not allow Leylandii to be planted in residential areas with small plots of land ... (no props on farms etc)

Another one that should be banned is russian vine .... one of my local garden centres sells them

 

Yes, the failure to regenerate is something most non-gardeners don't understand. These were chance seedlings, by the way (from the other neighbour's monsters, probably) so were not deliberately planted. There's three more 12 footers (and counting) at the bottom of the garden and I found two tiny ones that have had the chop.

This girl is normally very easy to get on with, by the way. it just seems ridiculous that we have occasion to quarrel over the garden which they obviously care absolutely nothing about!

 

Yeah, while we are at it lets ban Eucalyptus, Ash, Oak,Sycamore, Brambles and anything else you can think of that gets out of control.

There are no bad plants, only bad gardeners.

And some people should be banned from owning houses with a garden, I'd put them all in high rise flats, with lifts that dont work.
At least that way they would get some exercise.:D