Social Q's: How Do I Tell My Neighbor to Stop Tending to My Lawn?

[ermingarden]

Our retired neighbor has been sneaking onto our yard to weed and do other yardwork without our permission. At first, we were confused by magically improved areas of our yard; we mow and use a weed whacker, but that’s about it. The mystery was solved when I came home early from work one day and discovered our neighbor hard at work on our lawn. She saw my confusion and said: “I can’t stand clutter anywhere.” We left it at that. I want to confront her now before she starts up again this spring. My husband says let it go. I think her behavior is invasive and comes with an implied rebuke: You don’t care for your lawn properly. Thoughts? -NEIGHBOR

You are absolutely right that your neighbor has been trespassing and violating your property rights. I sympathize with your feelings of invasion. But what really intrigues me here is the weirdness. Your neighbor has been working hard, in secret, to make your yard nicer. I also interpret her comment about clutter differently than you — more as the confession of a neat freak than as a criticism of you.

Don’t misunderstand me. You have every right to stop her. (I would!) But if you go in too hot, as I fear you may, you will destroy your relationship with her. And under these odd circumstances, that seems like a shame. Yes, she made errors in judgment, possibly caused by too much time on her hands or a controlling nature. But let her bounce back from this.

Be measured. Say: “We understand you like your yard kept a certain way. But you have to respect our rights when it comes to our yard. Please stop gardening on our property.” Now, here’s the kicker: Tell her you’re talking to her about this because you value your relationship. Your gentleness could go a long way. After all, she’s still going to be living next door after your talk.

Comments

[ermingarden]

This is just so weird that, depending on the age of the "retired" neighbor, I wonder if dementia might be a factor? If so, that's not something for the LW to get involved with directly, but it does underscore the importance of a gentle approach to the issue.

[frenzy]

No good deed goes unpunished. Personally, I'd be happy for the free services, and if it keeps my elderly neighbor busy, assuming theyre just bored and looking for somethign to do, ill consider it a win? idk.

[ermingarden]

As someone who hates yardwork – I'd probably let her keep at it, too! (Fortunately, I live in an apartment, so my life is 100% yardwork free.) That said, I think it's very understandable for LW to be weirded out by the intrusion.

[frenzy]

oh yeah, its def weird. but yeah, as someone who also jsut refuses to do yard work, ill take an easy win. XD

hell, does she need to make some petty cash? I got some chores she could help me with too hahaha

[conuly]

If Neighbor gets injured tending to LW's yard, will Neighbor's insurance insist that LW pay the medical bills? Liability works in weird ways sometimes, and I'd want to get that figured out.

[jadelennox]

In most US states LW is 100% liable if Neighbor is injured by negligence (eg. a rake left on the lawn, a half-dug hole) while trespassing on LW's property. Even if Neighbor is outright robbing the place. Liability law is weird.

[jadelennox]

I wouldn't like it at all, because my garden is in the state I want it to be in -- which is absolutely cluttered by lots of people's standards. This doesn't seem to be the case with LW, but Neighbor is assuming that she and LW consider the same things to be weeds (and not intentional wildflowers); that Neighbor is not using chemicals harmful to Neighbor's health if not known about; that LW doesn't actively like the texture of little patches of clover or crabgrass. And this is assuming Neighbor isn't, herself, adding chemicals to the lawn.

Not to mention that in most of the US if Neighbor gets injured because she's trespassing with her unasked-for weeding and steps in a gopher hole, LW is liable for having the gopher hole. Sure, Neighbor is unlikely to sue, but if she breaks a hip nd her kids get pissy, that doesn't help LW. This sounds like I'm worst-case-scenarioing except it's the kind of thing that actually happens all the time.

So sure, be kind about it. But I would not consider it a win at all.

[conuly]

Sure, Neighbor is unlikely to sue

Neighbor is unlikely to want to sue, but most of those cases that are recorded as Neighbor vs Other Neighbor are really Insurance vs Other Insurance.

If you want insurance to pay up, you might not have any choice. They're gonna do whatever they can to make somebody else pay, every time.

[synecdochic]

Yeah, that was my first thought -- even if you WANTED your neighbor to be doing volunteer gardening on your property, it's not a good idea unless your homeowners' insurance has a good no-fault umbrella policy.

The good news is you can blame asking her to stop on the insurance and not on the being creeped out by someone fucking with your stuff: "oh, Neighbor, I'm thankful for your effort, but while I was renewing our insurance I looked at the policy documents and they wouldn't cover it if you got hurt while doing it, and your insurance probably wouldn't cover it either, so it could wind up being a disaster for both of us. I really do have to ask you to stop." And then maybe add something like, but your garden is so lovely, can you tell me where you get your plants/what products you use/whatever small thing to ask that will help her feel like you value her expertise (even if you won't use it!)

[purlewe]

I had a similar situation. I had a friend who has OCD and when she would come to visit she would start cleaning up. It was weird enough when we would pay her to come cat sit and come home to her having unpacked boxes (we had moved in May and she felt like she needed to "finish up" for us. We never found those things until we repacked and moved out) She would go out to our sidewalk and pull weeds (going so far as to buy a butter knife for the project). She would decide on a home repair when we were gone and spend her money working on it. We frequently asked her not to but she did it anyway. Once, at a party, I spilled some soup on my own floor and while I still had the soup bowl in my hand (I was going to put it down and grab a paper towel) she grabbed the mop and started MOPPING MY KITCHEN while I was standing there. I think that was the time I shouted at her. And she was terribly hurt by my shouting. But she often felt like she could do whatever she wanted bc "it bothered her" to see things in disarray. Her discomfort was more important than my boundaries. It probably surprises no one that we don't see each other much anymore and we stopped letting her watch the cats while we were away bc we hated the surprises we came home to as well as the things that disappeared bc she put them away for good.

[ermingarden]

That's a rough way for a friendship to dissolve – I'm sorry.

[purlewe]

I do feel bad about it. But no matter how many times we told her it bothered us and made us uncomfortable HER comfort was more important. Doing it the "right way" according to her was more important and we had to drift apart.

[oursin]

I am a bad person and would tell her that we were beginning a rewilding project For The Good Of The Environment, so the lawn is being let go to grow as it will as a ecological sward, and with luck we will eventually be having rare butterflies, etc, fluttering about.

[lilysea]

Yes this was my thought also

Lawns that are too tidy/too mowed

a) use more water and fertiliser

b) provide less habitat for insects, skinks, geckos etc

[melannen]

If a neighbor was weeding our lawn or our woody borders I would tell them that because it would be true!

If they weeded the garden bed by the mailbox with the bulbs, I would probably offer to pay them.

[heavenscalyx]

We have been actively rewilding our yard for 18 or so years -- for awhile, we were the only house on the street with fireflies, though I've noticed that a number of our immediate neighbors have stopped using Chemlawn-like services and they, too, have fireflies.

Our lawn is purposely untidy (partly a decision based on both my wife's disability and my own chronic health issues with being outside for any length of time) and I would be absolutely RIPSHIT if I came home to discover someone "gardening" on my property. (I was blank-out furious the one time ChemLawn accidentally treated our yard instead of the similar address on the other side of town, and informed them that we would take legal measures if it ever happened again, just before going out on a 40-degree day to try to save our already-wilting wildflowers by hosing them down.) We hire someone to come mow whatever parts of the lawn we haven't managed to destroy yet, and my partner and I periodically go out to try to wrangle the Asshole Vine into something like submission, but I have better things to spend my time on than making my lawn a sterile suburban fantasy and I don't want to live with a lawn like that.

[minoanmiss]

Being fond of several people who are sensitive to many chemicals, I am really uncomfortable with this. Besides the invasion of personally owned space, yardwork can involve chemicals people don't want to be exposed to. I can see how people could ethically accept this, um, vigorously offered help, but if I ever had a yard of my own I'd want to control what chemicals went on it and how.

[xenacryst]

I think you touch on the crux of the issue - it's not so much the trespassing or the furtiveness or the OCDness, but the incomplete knowledge on both sides. The neighbor might not know that LW really wanted to have that part of the yard wild or that there were sprouting flowers there that are now in the compost bin, and LW might not know what chemicals or new plants are being added. If they don't have a shared vision for how they want to manage the yard together, then their separate visions are very likely to come into conflict at some point. That kind of thing is hard enough when you're paying a professional gardener to come once a month and make things nice; it's virtually impossible when it's your neighbor doing it when you're not home.

[melannen]

Yeah I think this is the crux of it - if I noticed a neighbor was stopping to pull crabgrass from our floral borders or pick up litter dropped by passing cars every time they walked their dog down our street, I would probably smile and thank them. (I do the picking up litter bit myself.) But anything much more than that, they don't know what you want and you don't know what they're doing and anyway it starts to be really invasive! And definitely not anything that involves applying chemicals or removing physical objects (even junky ones) which it sounds like this person might be doing.

[shirou]

I would be concerned about liability. A lot of yardwork involves equipment that can cause injury. If the neighbor were injured while "volunteering" on LW's property, she could sue, at least in the US.

[ioplokon]

My exact thoughts. Now that they know it's happening, are they liable? And/or do they have responsibility to keep things safe(r)?

And the thing is, neighbor might not ever want to sue or even be thinking of it. But in the US, medical bills can force someone's hand.

[conuly]

Insurance might refuse to pay up unless they sue LW's insurance to get the money.

[sporky_rat]

I managed to get the neighbor across the way to quit poking at the area around my mailbox by telling them we were trying to get the area to 're-wild' for the bees. Turns out he was a retired bee-keeper and gave me a whole slew of bee-friendly seeds to scatter for the purpose.

Got lucky there.

[cereta]

I might take someone up taking care of the front if they wanted, but the back yard? For one thing, there's the hole that we though was a gopher whole that opened up under just the top crust that turned out to be well. Uh-uh. Our whole back yard is a series of bumps and divets. I've nearly broken my own ankle a few times, and I know the place.