Ivy - Its a nightmare !!

Hi, new to the board and would like to pick your brains and jump in at the deepend !!

At the bottome of our garden we have a 6 foot fence (4 Lap panels with wooden posts) that sits on top of a two foot wall.

According to our deeds the fence belongs to me.

The problem that I have is that this fence has Ivy growing over the top of it from our neighbours garden which backs onto the bottom of my garden.

The weight of the Ivy from behind the fence as well as coming over the top has buckled the middle two panels and pushed the wooden posts which now currently lean into our garden at 45 degrees.

Having spoke to our neighbour who seems like a reasonable sort of guy, he was shocked to see the damage that the ivy has caused and agreed that something had to be done. It has to be mentioned that he is keen to keep the Ivy in his garden as it finishes his garden of nicely.

Initially he was talking about putting a fence on his side of the garden to try and retain the ivy. He has recently come back to us and said that he felt that this wouldn't been beneficial in trying to stop the Ivy come over.

His latest suggestion is to replace the posts in our fence with concrete posts (he has offered to pay for these as his contribution) whilst we pick up the tab for the new featheredge fencing that we want.

Having had a think about this offer, I'm under the opinion that obviously the concrete post wouldn't lean into our garden once the new fence is in place and under pressure from the Ivy, but get the feeling it will only put even more pressure onto the panels which would then begin to buckle and leave me back at Square 1.

I understand that the only real answer is for our neighbour to chop down the Ivy on his side which would solve the situation, but I was just wondering if anyone knew of any alternative which would elimanate having to take this line of action. If we were to reduce the weight of the Ivy on top of the fence would this reduce the pressure be asserted against the fence from the other side ?? I'm not to sure !

Is there any products out there in the gardening world that could keep both my neighbour and myself happy ??

Any thoughts or suggestions would be kindly received.

Thank you for reading post, although it has gone on abit !!

All the best

Hi Gill,

Firstly can I just say a big, warm welcome to GardenStew. Very Happy

Now about your ivy problem. Mmmmm I really don't know how much help I can be but I have the same problem with some neighbours of mine. More than twenty years ago, when we moved to this house, they had ivy growing on our boudary fence. The fence was ours and the panels were badly buckled and ready to give way. We spoke to them, tried concrete posts and new fence panels, which we shared the price of, but the panels buckled under the weight too. We now have a brick wall in place but even the top section of that has had to be replaced although I do cut the ivy back each year!!! Piccie below:

I really don't know what solution to offer Gill as the only alternative I can see would be to fall out with your neighbour by taking him to court.

Maybe our neighbours should have had more sense in the first place that to grow ivy against a boundary fence!!!

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