Your Rights on Trees & Overhanging Branches

Trees can add a great deal of splendour to a garden. They could be fruit bearing trees, a place in which to retreat to the shade and they can also add a great deal of colour to a garden. However, they can also cause a nuisance to a next door neighbour when they start encroaching onto your side of the fence with problems ranging from attracting unwanted insects like bees and wasps, blocking out your light and shedding their leaves in the autumn all over your garden. Therefore, it’s important to know what your rights are and what you can and cannot do.

Establishing Ownership of Trees

The tree belongs to the person upon whose land it has originally grown. Even if its branches or, worse still, its roots have begun to grow over or into a neighbour’s territory, it belongs to the landowner where the tree was originally planted. Even if the tree bears fruit or flowers on branches which overhang into your land, it’s an offence under the Theft Act 1968 to keep them or to take cuttings of flowers, for example.

Obviously, many neighbours will not tend to worry about that too much but should a neighbour, for example, see you collecting apples from their tree even though the branches have grown onto your side, they can ask you to return them should they wish to under the letter of the law.

What You Can and Can’t do About Overhanging Branches

If the branches of a neighbour’s tree start to grow over to your side, you have every right to cut them back to the boundary point between you and your neighbour’s property as long as the tree is not under a tree preservation order, if it is, you’ll need to seek further clarification. However, the branches and any fruit on them which you may have cut down on your side still belong to the tree owner so they can ask you to return them.

Alternatively, you have every right to return them and ask your neighbour to dispose of them themselves should you wish to do so. What might seem a bit of a strange anomaly, however, is that even though any leaves from your neighbour’s tree which fall onto your garden in autumn, you have no right to ask them to come around and sweep them up.

On the other hand, should these leaves blow into any of your gutters and block your drains, you can ask your neighbour to pay to have them cleared or to pay for the cost of any damage they might have caused. If they refuse to do so, you can legally sue them and force them into paying. If you lop off any branches on your neighbour’s (the tree owner) side of the fence or you climb over the fence to cut off some more, you are actually trespassing upon their land for which you could be prosecuted.

Roots Of Trees

You are entitled to dig up and remove any roots that have encroached upon your land. Roots can cause a lot of problems and if they’re deep and/or causing subsidence or any other form of damage to your side of the property, you might need to get a tree surgeon or some other kind of structural engineer to deal with the problem. It’s always better to discuss this with your neighbour first but if an expert does have to be called in, it’s the tree owner’s responsibility to foot the bill, which they might choose to do by paying upfront or by claiming it against their own home insurance policy.