Homeowner Seeks Advice After 'Friendly' Neighbor Sparks Landscaping Dispute

When people move into a new home, they often want to establish good relations with the neighbors. Friendly neighbors may even help each other by doing favors like watering flowers or watching each others' dogs while on vacation. However, some people may go too far in trying to be a good neighbor, such as regularly showing up on your property uninvited. You might need some tips for getting along with difficult neighbors, even those who claim to mean well.

Although favors from neighbors are often appreciated, some might cross a boundary — literally. In a post that has since been removed, one user on Reddit asked for advice about a neighbor who was mowing parts of their property without asking, causing damage in a border garden. "When I confronted [my neighbor] politely the first time, he laughed and said, 'You should be thanking me, I'm making it look even.' I explained that I prefer to care for my yard myself, but he clearly didn't take me seriously," the Redditor wrote. "This week, I literally caught him mid-mow again, chopping right through the border plants I had just replanted. I told him firmly to stop, and he brushed it off.'"

If you're experiencing a similar problem with an intrusive neighbor who is doing more harm than good with their unwanted help, you have a few options. Unfortunately, many of these options will cost some money, and some may lead to hard feelings with the neighbor. Of course, every situation is unique, and if necessary, legally settling trespassing or property disputes in your local area may require differ solutions.

Whether they're mowing over the property line or your neighbor's landscaping floods into your yard when it rains, the first step you should try when facing property disputes with neighbors is direct and friendly communication. The neighbor might not even realize that they are mowing over the boundary line, so a polite conversion might be all you need to fix the issue. Of course, if your situation is similar to the Reddit user's above, a conversation may not solve everything. Before kicking things up a notch, you may need to hire a surveyor to place visible stakes along the property line. Even a small property might cost $800 to $1,500 to survey, so it might not be worth taking this step unless the neighbor truly believes the boundary is in a different place than it is. 

If surveying and marking the boundary doesn't improve the problem, you may have to take legal steps. You could hire a lawyer to write and send a cease-and-desist letter on your behalf. Hiring a lawyer to write such a letter costs almost $400 on average, but threatening legal action may be enough to stop the neighbor from touching your lawn. If it still continues, you can contact law enforcement for an accusation of trespassing. You'll need photos or videos with timestamps as evidence to show that the mowing and trespassing is occurring. Rather than seeking criminal trespassing charges, you could also try to file a civil lawsuit over the trespassing. Of course, taking legal action will be expensive and almost certainly ruin any relationship you have with the neighbor.

If you'd prefer to avoid spending money on legal options but you still want to send a message to your neighbor to stop them from mowing your lawn without permission, you could install a fence. A fence can be pricey, and it will need to fit your local or HOA regulations. To save money, you might consider a decorative garden fence that's small enough to see over but will still get the point across about the boundary line.

Commenters responding to the original Reddit thread suggested using large rocks to at least protect the garden beds that the neighbor was damaging. Hitting a rock with your lawn mower, especially a large rock, could severely damage the machine. Hopefully the neighbor will be aware of this, causing them to stop mowing near the rocks. Other Reddit users suggested planting bushes along the property line or even turning on sprinklers in the area each time the neighbor started the mower, giving the neighbor a soaking if he comes close.

Although it may seem silly or annoying when a neighbor acts this way, it's important to address it quickly. You could end up losing the strip of property that the neighbor is caring for through a process called adverse possession. Depending on the rules in your state, someone who actively uses and maintains a piece of property could claim physical possession of it through using adverse possession. A typical adverse possession claim requires the neighbor to care for the property for 20 years or more, so it's not easy to take a strip of land this way, but it is possible. Knowing this, you probably don't want to ignore the neighbor's annoying mowing habits. Putting a stop to it as soon as possible is the right choice.