When your neighbor’s leaves fall into your garden: Who is responsible for its disposal?

Leaves. Fruit. Rotten fruit. Branch. All of this can be in your garden without wanting it. Respectively, it falls from the neighbor’s neighbor. What now? Of course, the best possible solution is to agree with the neighbors to solve the situation. So whether they go to you regularly to dig leaves and collect the crops (even the rotten fallen on the ground), or the neighbor will have reason and branches itself so that none of his land gets into yours.

What does the law say?

May it be so simple, right? Often it is not. This is what the new Civil Code remembers, namely its paragraph 1016. He says that fruits fallen from trees and shrubs from the neighboring land belong to you. So you can happily collect apples, plums, pears of trees and gooseberries and currants from shrubs.

What to do when a neighbor is idle

The same paragraph also adjusts that you can request a neighbor to remove and if he does not do so in a reasonable time, you can remove the branches of trees and roots yourself. And in addition to the damage or other difficulties that the tree with its branches and roots causes you to keep the tree above interest.

At the same time, and be careful, you have to deal with the naughty tree interference with your land at the appropriate time of year. This means the time of vegetation calm, ie from the beginning of November to the end of March. This is governed by the Decree of the Ministry of the Environment 189/2013 Coll., On the protection of trees and the authorization of their felling.

Why we draw attention to the vegetation period is that if you do not go well and cut the tree in the middle of summer, it could cause you trouble. We will add a little thing that captivated us from the perspective of time – when we wrote about a reasonable time when a neighbor or shrubs interfere with your fence, the Civil law does not specify this time. It only states only “in a reasonable time”.

Plants other than trees – here is different

There’s another thing. We focused only on trees. For example, flowers, herbs, or in short other plantsIn order to quote the law, you can remove at any time without restrictions and any discussions. But beware, you have to do so in a gentle way.

And just for the sake of completeness – if you get leaves from neighbor’s land with the help of wind on a pergola or garden house, ie without reaching the branch, you do nothing. You have to rake the leaves yourself.

The wording of the whole passage regulating relationships we wrote about today is here:

Act No. 89/2012 Coll., The Civil Code § 1016

(1) Fruits fallen from trees and shrubs to the neighboring land belong to the owner of the neighboring land. This is not true if the neighboring land is a public estate.

(2) If the owner fails to do so in a reasonable time after the neighbor asked, the neighbor may remove the roots or branches of the tree exceeding his land, if the damage or other difficulties exceeding the interest on the unaffected tree preservation. He also belongs to what he gets from the removed roots and branches.

(3) Parts of other plants exceeding the neighboring land may be removed by a neighbor in a gentle manner without further restrictions.

So good luck. Perhaps you will talk to everything and you will not have to go to court.

Source: www.domky-delta.cz, www.ekolist.cz