How do I complain to my neighbour who is doing me a favour?

Hopefully now you have written this down, you wont feel as angry. Tell the useless sod to watch his feet in future!!!! Only joking - why dont you just tell him what you have told us - I'm sure he'll be mortified!

One word 'gently' did you discuss before hand how the fence was going to be built? You obviously gave your neighbour permission to go onto your garden ground to do this. Did you think to say 'Oh and this and this are very special plants please don't step on them'. I know when B and I are moving things around one or other of us occasionally steps on a precious plant. Oh and Treacle - why do you assume he is a 'useless sod'?

I was 'only joking', moon grower.

Well I have to agree alot with Moon grower I am sorry but you must have known when it was going to be done & should have said or moved the plants but as the saying goes its no use crying over spilt milk it was not done with any bad intention Im sure, so best to try & forget it & learn from this experience.

I know how you feel Treacle...I had a young joiner put up a dividing fence last spring...my tulips were about 3-4 inches up (not as expensive as your plants) i told him before he started, but i assume he didnt see them...as i looked out at him working i saw him stand on them,,,i just screamed...he must have thought i was a lunatic...it worked though......im so sorry this happened to you.....

How about replacing the plants and when speaking to him....make sure you tell him that you had to do so because the donors would be terribly upset at you "losing them"..If he is not a total "sod" he may offer to refund you!!!!
Your Pseudopanax is apparently available at Burncoose Nuseries for about £7.50
http://www.burncoose.co.uk/site/plants.cfm?_cr=GA1&pl_id=3490

PS If your Hebe has any bits broken off that look viable.....stick 'em in a pot and make new plants....you could actually benefit by increasing your stock..LOL !!!

At the end of the day good neighbours are hard to find - so perhaps wait til you feel less cross before you broach the subject with him - and once again I WAS JOKING about the sod thing :O)))

We had the same trouble when our neighbours helped put up a communal fence...while we went in for lunch they carried on & trampled on my plants. I'm afraid non-gardeners just don't think where they are putting their size 10s!

Also our house was repainted this summer & all my plants are now speckled with white! It's a bit late to shout after the event & I suppose & he did do you a favour when all's said & done.
Count to 10 & have a stiff one?:0)

I dont think you should say anything to him; I'm afraid this is a lesson for you, not him. It is very distressing, and I understand how you feel, but, unless you warned him, there's not much you can say now, its too late. My experience of people who know nothing about plants and aren't interested is that they just don't see them, step all over them when doing jobs like this and worse, they think they'll be fine and recover anyway. Imagine how he's going to feel - he's doing you a favour, is oblivious to plants anyway, presumably you never warned him about the plants, and then you're going to be complaining that he's damaged things, after all his hard work. That's what he's going to think and feel, whether its justified or not, and I'm not sure its worth causing trouble over it. Just remember never to let anyone do you a favour again, unless you're going to be standing over them while they work and have warned them anyway.

Couldn't agree more.....it is a very difficult situation - especially where neighbours are concerned.
I had my ancient cottage totally renovated 3 years ago and lost a lot of things under all the rubble...and just had to bite my tongue and use the opportunity to fill the gaps with new things!! I am about to have the remains of a lovely hawthorn tree removed as a lorry twisted the whole thing badly when the driver backed up my avenue badly. The poor tree never stood a chance and has slowly died off...I'll use the stump to grow a nice clematis!!

I do not think you should be angry after all plants will regrow or at least are cheaper to replace than the fence materials you got free plus his labour. If it were me I would give him a decent drink and a thank you. So that next time I need something doing he will offer again.
So think again pour your self a drink and think what a lucky person you are to have a well meaning neighbour.

Its alot easier to mention things from the start. Builders have managed to avoid almost all things at home as i put it that things were precious. A geranium had to have a ladder on it therefore squashed but it came back.
Trouble is people think 'a plants a plant' and unaware of that particular plants inportant to the owner.

Just a thought -you mention.. 'My neighbour has kindly offered to replace the fence along our boundary' Do you know whose fence it is?, a boundary fence,depending on whose ground it is on, usually belongs to one or other dwelling either side of the boundary. if it is your fence and he is replacing it then that is very good of him. If it is his fence then he is replacing his own fence.

This is not a legal issue about boundaries, I am more than aware of the legalities of garden law, most of the GOY members usually ask me for advice. I bought the posts, the gravel boards and the panels are being reused and I have bought the wood stain. He put the original fence up for the previous owner (who paid for the materials and treated his teeth - he was a dentist) using 3 by 3 posts which have since rotted and I have bought 4 by 4 ones. I wanted to take the whole fence down and replace it with a hedge of Escallonia so it was a bit more of a living boundary and nice for wildlife. He refused absolutely to consider this and wanted to keep the fence. We got quotes for the work and they were obscene to say the least. We thought as each panel falls down we would replace it with shrubs and promise to maintain it, however that wasn't good enough. He is a bit too forthright and has bullied us into doing what he wants, he even wanted to change a border of my boundary on the front garden. I should have said something to him, but I have looked at his sh**ty euonymous on the other side of this fence and it hasn't even had a leaf split. He has even filled in a large hole which was going to be part of a bog area, we used a mini digger to take out the soil!! He has filled it back in. I was out there this morning with a spirit level and the gravel boards aren't level meaning that the panels on top of them won't be straight and I don't think he has put the fence posts in deep enough. But at the end of the day he is saving us time and money, what can you do?

Good idea about the cuttings, i'll try that later. My husband is in Germany at the moment so when he gets back, he is more diplomatic than me, he can help with the fence and he will get to speak about the post depth, the levelling and things like that. I am going out in the garden later, i'll politely ask if he thinks he needs me to move any plants, this will gently lead into the fact he has already broken some!

Good luck, AR...it is always tricky dealing with overbearing neighbours and it looks as though you have one there right enough ....filling in a hole you had DUG deliberately..OMG!
Do you think he took advantage of your husband's absence to do this boundary job...assuming a lady on her own wouldn't fight back!! Your diplomatic husband is going to have to advise him that he has to dig out your bog area again or hire a digger to do so for you. What a shambles...I too would be chewing nails and spitting rust!

Yes I wish you all the best with this and hope I didn't upset you - only trying to help when mentioning boundaries. I see that you have enough on your plate at the moment.

I screamed last night as well when I went out there to look at the work he had done, he wasn't there at the time. I'm glad he wasn't really! I have spent this morning digging up what is left of my shrubs and taking cuttings from the branches that are damaged and split completely off the plants.

No you didn't upset me Richardpeeej, no problem.

God, sounds like a right nightmare, Andrea - with hindsight, might have been better to pay the money and have got someone else to do it. And surely, if you wanted a hedge and he wanted a fence, couldn't you have just put a hedge up - though I suppose he'd have added a fence his side and "somehow" managed to damage your hedge... I know it doesn't help, but you have my sympathy

I wanted to say try & think of the positive a free fence & a decent neighbour but let me tell you something that happened to me it really is an example of ignorance.
My neighbour had his driveway done last year & I watched the man instruct some foreigners before leaving them to it I was amazed to see one go to the side of his garage & in broad daylight in an open area proceed to urinate up the side of the wall .....anyway our driveway was a mess & they were cheap so we had ours tarmaced I was talking to the man in charge an Irish guy when the same man went up to my wheelie bin & pee'd up the side of it ......I was just so shocked for once I was speechles !

Well you know what they say, Davey - you pay peanuts, you get monkeys!! Pity he didn't do it in a container or on the borders - a bit of extra nitrogen never does any harm!

You know, I'm still considering a hedge, I am going to speak to my husband about it this weekend. The neighbour is a really nice person, just misinformed about most stuff. He goes on about the boundary and what he wants, but the reality is legally it is my responsibility and I can do what I want, but my hubby has said don't start throwing legal jargon at people who don't understand they think you are being threatening. In the front when I re-did the garden we share a boundary, he allowed me to plant along his bit, but then kept standing on the plants and driving over them. I didn't mind but one day he came out with a drawing and said he wanted to but bricks along the boundary and some small posts with rope in between them, so I took all of the plants out which had started to establish, pieris, thrift, alliums, sedum and I have them in the back garden and I don't know where to put them. I thought in hindsight I didn't like his idea and should have said he could put what he liked along there as long it was on his side of the boundary, not along the boundary line. Am I being petty?

It's so difficult with neighbours but in my experience there is nothing worse than being on bad terms with them. It spoilt my own enjoyment of being out in the garden if my difficult neighbours were in theirs too. Fortunately we have since moved. I would avoid ill feeling at all costs as he sounds like a tricky customer and things could get very nasty.
Could you plant your escallonia hedge on your side of the fence for a more natural look.
Bamboo, in your description of the attitude of a non-gardener you have described my husband to a 'T' and I have to put up with this kind of thing all the time (and his feet are size 13) !

Hindsight is a wonderful thing Andrea the trouble is, as I usually find, it comes too late! I think that you have done all that you can reasonably do. Save as much of your plants, shrubs etc as you can, let your neighbour finish the fence and then replant your side as you want it. In the meantime try not to worry about it -it will soon be finished!

I don't think there's anything wrong with saying he can do what he likes on his side, but not on yours, tho' perhaps not in those words - as long as its said firmly but cheerily, its nothing but the truth. And sometimes its necessary to reinforce one's borders, and I don't mean the flowering kind, I mean the personal ones, though in this case, it could be either!

On this subject I was reminded of a dispute over hedges & boundaries my parents had that lasted all my childhood with threats criminal damage police & endless solicitors letters so you can imagine what the atmosphere at home used to be like -you could cut it with a knife, on reflection Id say the blame was 50/50 but it reminds me its always worth giving folk the benefit of the doubt sometimes - anything within reason to keep the peace,,,,anyway I hope you can get this resolved with as little further upset as possible