If your neighbor is doing something that bothers you, the best thing that you can do is talk to them and try to work together to find a good solution.

What would you do if you were no longer able to care for some plants at the back edge of your property, so your neighbors complained that it was becoming overgrown and causing issues with their grapevines?

That is what happened to the person in this story, so the neighbors had a surveyor come out to establish the property line, only to find out that they had planted their grapevines on his land. He promptly cleared out the plants, including their grapes, as requested.

This is a great example of why it is so important to try to maintain a good relationship with your neighbors. This issue could have been avoided with a conversation. Read through the full story below and see how you think it should have been handled.

Want me to remove the plants on the edge of my property? Sure!

My nonno (Italian for grandfather) used to have vines as a hobby up to the mid 90’s, but when he started to get older he stopped tending them so much.

The neighbors can’t force him to keep his vines in that area.

He pulled out the ones furthest away from the house and let that regrow into native bushland at the back.

The neighbours in behind weren’t a fan of this as they used that land to tend to their grapes and now had to be more careful with their tractor so they didn’t hit anything.

Well, asking him to keep his plants on his own property is pretty reasonable.

They complained to nonno several times, eventually threatening to get a surveyor in and forcing him to prune his property back to that line.

He told them to get off his property and slammed the door.

Oops. I bet they didn’t expect that.

Well, said neighbour DID get a surveyor in; want to know what they found?

There was indeed a discrepancy – the last row of vines planted by that neighbour was on nonno’s land all along.

Nonno let the neighbors shoot themselves in the foot.

Nonno knew this, he just had never been bothered to call in a surveyor as it hadn’t been a problem up until now.

After the verdict came through, he happily removed the offending plants on the property boundary and the neighbours lost a row of vines.

The neighbors got exactly what they asked for, but not at all what they wanted.

Read on to see what the commenters on this story had to say about what happened.

Make a little money off of the neighbors.

This commenter thinks her grandpa would do the same thing.

Now this would have been funny.

Apparently, an HOA doesn’t want to deal with surveyors. This is good to know.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about neighbors who have to set a firm boundary with neighbors who ask too many child-related favors.

Why do some people insist on causing trouble?

If his neighbor has a problem, he could have just talked it out with him. Instead, he decided to get the city officials involved, and that didn’t end the way he wanted.

Of course, Grandpa could have also been more reasonable, too. He could have let them keep their grapevines up if they agreed to deal with any unwanted plants themselves.