New Neighbor Wants Five Feet of Someone Else’s Property — Then Threatens Their Plants

The homeowner had barely settled into her grandfather’s old house before the next-door neighbor started making it clear he had opinions about her yard.

She was a first-time homeowner with limited income, a toddler, an infant, and a reel mower. That alone tells you the mowing situation was not exactly effortless. She was trying to keep up with the grass between rain, kids, and the regular chaos of owning a home for the first time.

Then her new neighbor texted.

In a Reddit post, the homeowner said the neighbor had an 8-foot chain-link fence along part of the property line. She did not want to keep mowing tight against that side forever because she planned to plant privacy greenery there, including confederate jasmine, to block the view and make the side yard feel less exposed.

The neighbor apparently did not like that plan.

According to the homeowner, he texted her that he would kill her plant if it touched his fence. Then he made another comment that took the whole thing from annoying to bizarre: he said it was “a lot of grass to cut” and told her he wanted to buy five feet of her property.

For a new homeowner already trying to figure out mowing, planting, drainage, and boundaries, that would be enough to make anyone uneasy.

The neighbor also told her he had bought a blower to move grass off his side and said that if she planned to plant anything, she needed to talk to him first because he was a landscaper.

That part clearly bothered her. It was her yard. Her property. Her plan. Yet the neighbor was acting as though his job title gave him some kind of authority over what she could plant beside his fence.

The setup was already tight. The homeowner said the strip between the houses was only about 9 feet wide. She also had a shed less than 6 inches from his fence, along with her AC unit nearby. So selling him five feet was not some small, harmless adjustment. It would eat up a huge chunk of a narrow side yard and likely create even more problems around access, drainage, and the structures already there.

Still, the homeowner did not seem interested in picking a fight just for the sake of it. She said she did not mind losing some usable space to plants if it meant the neighbor would leave her alone. What she wanted was privacy and peace.

There was another issue too: water.

The homeowner said the neighbor’s gutters were draining into her yard. In an update, she explained that the gutters at the ends of his awning drained toward her side and toward the house. So while he was complaining about grass clippings and plants, she was dealing with runoff from his property.

That detail changed the tone of the conversation for a lot of commenters. Suddenly, the neighbor was not just a picky fence owner who hated vines. He was someone complaining about her yard while possibly sending water into it.

Then the situation escalated again.

The homeowner updated the post and said the neighbor had gone into her yard to cut the grass along his side. She had already been trying not to leave clippings near him, but she said even one piece of grass seemed to upset him. When she did not mow along the fence the way he wanted, he crossed onto her side and did it himself.

That is the kind of thing that makes a neighbor dispute feel different. Complaining is one thing. Texting threats about plants is one thing. But stepping into someone else’s yard to cut grass near the property line makes the whole situation feel more personal and more invasive.

The homeowner seemed torn between wanting to keep things civil and realizing this neighbor might keep pushing. She talked about getting the property lines marked and said she definitely did not want to sell him the five feet. She just wanted to cover his view into her yard and deal with the drainage.

She also started considering putting up horizontal boards or tall bushes so nothing would blow onto his side and he could not see into hers as easily. But even that came with the same problem: if he was already threatening to kill plants that touched his fence, she had to plan carefully.

The whole fight started with grass clippings and privacy plants, but it quickly became a bigger boundary issue. The neighbor wanted control over what she planted. He wanted a chunk of her land. He threatened her landscaping in writing. Then he allegedly entered her yard to cut grass himself.

For a first-time homeowner with small kids and limited money, it was a rough introduction to the reality that sometimes the hardest part of owning a home is not the repairs, the mowing, or the bills. It is the person next door who thinks your property should work around them.

Commenters were nearly unanimous on one point: do not sell him the land.

Several people warned that giving up five feet would not make the neighbor easier to deal with. They believed he would just find another thing to complain about once he got what he wanted. Some also questioned why he wanted exactly five feet and wondered whether his fence, shed, drainage, or setback situation might already be questionable.

A lot of commenters told the homeowner to get the property lines professionally marked before doing anything else. They said she needed to know exactly where the fence sat, where her property began, and whether any of his setup was encroaching on her side.

Others focused on the gutters. Multiple commenters said she should check local rules about drainage, because many places do not allow one property to dump water onto another in a way that causes problems. They suggested looking into ordinances before worrying too much about grass clippings.

There was also plenty of advice about documentation. Commenters told her to save the text where he threatened the plant, install a camera on that side of the house, and keep records if he came into the yard again. One commenter pointed out that if anything happened to the plants later, the text would make it harder for him to pretend he had nothing to do with it.

On the landscaping side, people suggested privacy plants that would not need to climb his fence, such as arborvitae or tall shrubs planted a little away from the property line. Others warned against aggressive options like bamboo, which can turn into its own nightmare fast.

A few commenters said the neighbor may have the right to keep plants off his fence, but that did not mean he had the right to kill the whole plant or dictate everything she planted on her side.

By the end of the thread, the advice was clear: mark the property line, do not sell, document the threats, address the drainage, and plant for privacy without relying on his fence. The homeowner wanted a quieter yard. The neighbor wanted control. And five feet of property had become the line neither side was likely to forget.