A father has spoken out about his neighbourhood row after the people next door cut through the roots of his large oak tree.
The dad, who is called Jack and lives in the United States, took to Reddit on Thursday to say his neighbours had hired contractors to install a walkway at the side of their house next to the tree, but they dug so deeply that “a lot of the roots” were destroyed.
He is now devastated that the 70-foot tree may never recover, and fears it is only a matter of time before it collapses.
“They dug about 16 inches deep into the root system of a large oak near the edge of our property, roughly four to five inches from the trunk,” Jack wrote.
“The tree is 60 to 70 feet tall and very old. Should I be concerned about the health of the tree or increased risk of tree fall?
“Contractors haven’t cleaned up yet so I can see a lot of the roots that they dug up lying around. Most appear to be one to three inches in diameter.”
Jack added that he “has a good relationship” with his neighbours, so he was “blindsided” that they would do this.
“I do love the tree, but not enough to get confrontational about it,” he continued.
“I figure they may not have known the contractors would do this. But is it crazy to think the company that did this without talking to me are out of line?
“The painful irony is that I paid this same company to prune this tree a couple of years ago, and the owner is another neighbour.”
People in the comments were outraged by the situation, and many urged the father to seek legal advice.
“Why can’t people respect trees?” one Redditor lamented, while another declared: “Now is not the time to be passive or avoid confrontations.”
“That’s pretty terrible. Right through the critical root zone. You should have an arborist come up and assess. It’s not good,” added another.
“Idiots. Yes, you should be concerned. That’s bad,” echoed a fourth.
Some other people did defend the neighbours, with one arguing: “What can they even do, the tree roots were on the neighbour’s property? It wouldn’t be reasonable for them to never improve their driveway because of roots on their property.”
“I somewhat understand it because trees are important, but not being able to do work on your own property because a neighbour’s tree encroaches is wild,” another person said.
Jack thanked commenters for sharing their advice and said that while he wanted to avoid legal action, he isn’t ruling it out.
“I don’t dispute that the neighbours have the right to do what they want on their property,” he penned.
“I wish the contractors had taken care not to jeopardise this tree, but what’s done is done. I’m simply trying to understand if there is an alternative to me being on the hook for a very expensive tree removal to mitigate the risk of collapse onto a structure.”