A woman has been left furious after two of her neighbours “ruin her privacy” by talking to each other over her garden fence.
The woman took to Mumsnet’s popular Am I Being Unreasonable (AIBU) forum to seek advice on how to deal with the situation. She explained that the layout of her street means that her garden backs immediately onto the garden of the house opposite hers.
The two neighbours in question live at a diagonal to one another, with one being the house next to hers and the other being in the one opposite, reports the Mirror. Since the two neighbours live so close to one another, they have opted to talk over the fences of the houses surrounding them rather than go around the street to visit each other.
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Their decision has left the woman caught in the middle of their exchanges feeling “awkward” and “annoyed”. The neighbours, the woman explained, have to stand on objects to make themselves tall enough to stand above the fences and can see directly into her garden while they chat, meaning she has no privacy to enjoy her own garden.
In her Mumsnet post, the woman said: "The houses on my street back into gardens from the people behind with no path in between. The issue is with people behind and people next to us. I think they are close friends. They constantly talk in the corner of the fence between mine and theirs. This happens quite a lot so not just a one off.
"The fences are relatively high, about average adult height, but they stand on things to speak to each other over the corner of the fence, or they are shouting over to get each other's attention.
“I was in my garden playing with my dog and I had two people talking at a higher height than me at the corner of our garden. As someone who suffers from social anxiety too, it might be just me (maybe others wouldn't feel so annoyed), but I felt like my privacy was breached."
The woman claims that her neighbours don't move when they see her using her garden and says she feels as though she never gets to use her own garden because her neighbours are "always in".
She added: "They don't budge when they see me either. because they are stood up high I feel awkward as hell like they can see my whole garden and into my house. They are always in too! One side has 6 kids that are all home schooled so they are often talking over the fence too. I wouldn't mind if it was just the kids, to be honest!
“I feel more awkward with the adults having a conversation. I just feel like there's often someone in corner of my garden."
The woman's post quickly got reactions from other Mumsnet users, who offered advice such as planting a tree in the corner of her garden to give herself some much-needed privacy. One person said: "Oh I'd hate this! You could buy some bamboo in pots to put in that corner - won't stop them gassing but at least they can't see you/you see them."
Another wrote: "Can you put a mature tree up? That would drive me bonkers too." A third added: "Massively rude, would really hack me off. You can get clump forming bamboo that doesn’t spread too much. Otherwise a large bushy evergreen, maybe something spiky…"
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