Next Door's Jungle

My first post on this forum, and quite possibly my first on a gardening forum. Hello everyone.

Here's the story: my neighbour is a bit of a recluse and his garden has become a jungle. The issue I have though is that, over the years, weeds of trees have now become serious trees, as high as 15ft. They are growing right next to (within 2ft) and along the wall of my property. I asked the council to do something, and of course they won't. Apparently it is my neighbour's problem.

How wrong they are, it is my problem, because I know my hermit of a neighbour enough to realise that he has no money and is very unlikely to be insured. We've had the bailiffs around a few times looking for him. You get the picture.

However, my neighbour is approachable and I'm sure he will allow me in to do what needs to be done.

So my question: if I cut the trees down to a stump, will the roots die down over time and is this likely to be a serious issue for my foundations?

We have a mix of evergreens and deciduous trees

Any advice would be much appreciated

 

Hi and welcome to GC. There are far more knowledgeable people on here than me, but here's my input anyway.

If you cut the trees right down, then yes over time (a long time) the roots will decay and weaken as they do, so if they've already undermined your foundations it may pose a problem in the future. However if you leave them to grow then their roots will grow too, and there are few things that a growing tree can't shift. As a starting point, until you can get someone in to have a look who knows their stuff, maybe the best bet might be to tidy the trees up and get them to a manageable size.

 

Good evening Laystar and welcome to the site. Firstly, you are goiing to need your neighbours permission to deal with these trees ( preferably in writing ). Secondly, you need to identify the trees in question ( so that you can gauge approximate root growth and suckering potential ). How big are the plants in question?

 

We've a similar problem, our elderly next-door neighbours ignore their garden other than paying someone to cut the grass. We've had to replace a fence panel as last year the wind blew it out of the concrete posts because she had put nails in the panels and tied stuff to it. All our quinces and climbers are attached to wires stretched between hooks in holes drilled into the concrete posts. At least they paid for the panel which I put in. But I know it'll happen again.
My wife is a bit of devil with the systemic weed killer which she sprays on stuff, particularly convolvulus which tries to creep over the fence panels.
Without seeing what it is it's difficult to say what to do. Obviously your only solution is to offer to take on the job, but if you do make sure they get someone in like a friend or relative to keep on top of it when it's done.
Again not knowing the circumstances, unless the trees are willow I can't see them being any sort of structural threat if they are “spindly.” Normally, tree roots don't usually spread much further than the width of its canopy, but don't rely on that. Removing spindly trees as long as they aren't too tall, it's best to cut them down to about six feet, expose the roots and then rock them until the become loose. It works particularly well with conifers.

We had a problem the other side with a previous neighbour's huge cherry tree, (enough pink blossom to fill five bin-bags fell on our side of the fence each year). The host tree had taken over from the one grafted on the side. The main tap root was growing under our back patio (unlike us they’d never bothered much with watering their garden) and causing "heave." So I took the patio up and dug down to the root and cut it off (it was a foot thick) on the boundary line, filled in the hole and re-laid the patio, of course the tree died and they had it lopped, but over the next couple of years with the roots shrinking the patio dipped a bit so I had to relay the patio again. So big trees can cause problems.

I can see you having a lot of hard work and hiring skips these days are expensive. But it may be worth it.

 

One thing to keep in mind on that though is this: There was a thing on the news a while ago where council contractors uprooted a small tree that was growing next to a house. They weren't really qualified to do the job, and just ripped the tree out. A couple days later the house had to be evacuated because great cracks appeared in it and it was deemed structurally unsound. The house ended up being demolished.

An extreme example I know, but it shows what can happen if we mess with tree roots too close to a house's foundations.

 

I'm sure your right but it would have to have a substantal root to affect foundations unless they were originally inadequate.
It depends on how "spindly" are these trees we've not seen.
Difficult to advise without seeing photos.

 

Cut them down and treat the stumps with tree stump killer I believe Roundup do a good one.

 

Thank you for all of your comments. I'm sort of dammed if I do and dammed if I don't cut the trees down really, don't you think?

The trees are quite spindly, except one which is some sort of fir tree and is quite chunky. I think the fir is about 15 to 20ft high

 

If it's a Leylandii, even a tree that size won't have a deep root.

Digressing a bit, we ordered half a dozen by mail order in about 1973 (when they suddenly became popular). They were delivered through the letter box. We had five as a back hedge for a while which I cut down and uprooted in the early eighties but l had one in central bed which finally went in 1984. It was as tall as the one you described, but I took it down and up-rooted in the way I said in an earlier post. I still remember that after chopping it up, it filled 17 bin bags which I ferried down to the tip in several trips in our little car at the time, a Renault 5GT.

 

It could be deep enough to be a real nightmare though. I have a Leylandii hedge (I didn't plant it there), and a flower bed running along the foot of it. Last year I decided to sort out a bindweed problem, which involved spraying the whole bed with Round-Up, and then digging it all over. I decided to sink a barrier in the ground to slow down the inevitably bindweed invasion from next door. While I was at it I decided to hack out some of the Leylandii roots because they were nicking all the moisture and nutrients out of the ground. I wish I'd took pictures, but at the time I was too ashamed of the mess. The garden looked like I was re-enacting WW1, I dug a trench all the way along about 2 ft deep, and hacked off roots as I found them. Sometimes I'd expose a chunky root about 2ft down, and then decide I needed to go deeper either side so I could get my saw in. Of course then I'd feel compelled to make it all the same depth. I ended up working in a trench about 3 ft deep, with another 2 or 3ft of mound in front of me. I was still finding good chunky roots, but I was well into the subsoil by this time, so I decided I'd gone for enough.

In case your wondering, I only chopped off the roots on my side. I figured the bindweed farm next door could keep the roots on their side, seeing as they obviously didn't care about their garden.

 

Yes it depends a lot on the age of the tree and what sort of soil you have.
But when people saw off the trunk close to the root as many do (someone did that across the road a few weeks back) rather than leave six foot of it so you can use the mechanical advantage of rocking it when you've exposed the roots, it makes the job harder.

It would help if we had some photos as we're all trying to be helpful, but working blind.

 

That's true. When we were removing some Gorse bushes off my land, we cut them down enough so we could get into them, but left a couple of foot of growth on them. This gave us something to fasten a winch too, which saved us a fair bit of effort some cases.

The only reservation I have in this case about rocking the trees out is their proximity to the a wall. If they are within 2ft of the wall as laystar says, then there is a very good chance that the roots have breached the foundations of the wall, so rocking the tree out might compromise the wall. That said, if the trees are left as they are, then the rocking they get with good strong winds may well do damage in the same way.

Like you say, we could do with some pics, so we can see whats actually going on.

 

Here are some pictures, taken today from the roof of my bungalow. In one of the pictures you can see next door's roof-top which is quite close to my place. The trees grow along from my flat-roof garage and then down the side of a bedroom that I am standing on top of.

I spotted an oak, holly, apple tree (nice apples actually), hawthorn and some others that I'm sure you can pick out

That fir-looking tree at the end (red berries) is just inches off of the corner of my garage door and the trunk is about 4 - 5 inches in diameter

 

Christ!

There could be lions n' tigers in there!

 

:lollol:And bears. Yes it is a tad overgrown isn't it. From the pics, I wouldn't disturb the roots. I'd just hack them down. The oak is probably the biggest threat, they can produce some amazingly elaborate and chunky roots. Hawthorn might be a problem. They easily grow back from a stump, as farmers have known for hundreds (if not thousands) of years, which is one of the various reasons they make such good hedgerow trees. Holly might not be such an issue. It is quite slow growing so chopping it down to the ground should buy a few years of time.