By the very nature of living amongst and near other people, from time to time, disagreements are bound to spring up. After all, when in human history have people agreed upon everything? However, when an argument or disagreement occurs with a neighbor, it can cause you to lose that sense of warmth and familiarity you would otherwise enjoy when at home. Now, your doorstep is a potential site of conflict, and that’s never fun to take part in.
For this reason, learning how to manage disagreements with your neighbor and push these discussions in a healthier direction is a worthwhile skill. This is especially true when it comes to garden maintenance and care, given how this is often one of the most vital sticking points between those living near one another.
In this post, we’ll discuss a few remedial strategies worth putting in place. Without further ado, please consider:
Get To The Heart Of The Issue
The worst thing you can do is let passive aggressive issues fester and escalate between both parties. For example, if you find that they’ve applied a fence onto your side of the lawn, well communication should be immediate instead of removing it or moving it. Frank discussions can help you come to a timely agreement, but it can also provide a sense of focus that leads you to a mutual understanding, perhaps in working together. For example, maybe they want to install a new fenceline on the border, but you think the design is unappealing. You could agree to fund half of a newer fence, or discuss a two-panel fence so it looks different on both sides.
Maintain Your Garden Well
A good technique to win any argument is to prevent the opposing party from having ammunition to throw at you. For example, if your garden is in good condition, is appropriately maintained, if you use lawn fungicides and pull weeds to prevent issues from reaching their own garden, this means that any requests for your neighbor to take care of their own (if it affects your patch) is going to be less hypocritical. Moreover, you can better work through issues together if your neighbor seems to see your garden as a standard to appreciate.
Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff
A child kicking a ball into your garden every other month, a garden party hosted late at night now and again, or even them paving over their garden and causing it to look a little less appealing than you would like it to (this is still their property) are just part of living near people. After all, to be active in a garden is to be present and sometimes loud there. Not sweating the small stuff and generally having a welcoming demeanour when you greet your neighbor should make the issues you really want to discuss seem so much more important, and they will be.
With this advice, you’ll be certain to manage those garden disagreements with your neighbor, and much more favorably to boot.