The Saga of a New Backyard Fence

We have a new fence in our backyard today.  It's a real beauty! Probably a project that would have cost us many thousands of dollars.  And we did not have to pay a penny for it, thanks to our new backyard neighbor claiming he owned a few inches of our yard at one corner of our property. When we told him we actually owned those few inches by virtue of a New York State statute called "adverse possesion," he made us an offer very hard for us to refuse:  He would pay to remove our old fence and replace it with a new one of our choosing, along the newly surveyed property line.  He also had his contractors dig out a massive patch of excruciatingly invasive Bishop's Weed plants that crowded into half of our lawn and replace that patch with new weed-free topsoil, ready for us to re-plant with whatever new plants we chose.

Here's approximately what our old chain-link fence looked like when we purchased our Saratoga Springs home in 1971.  The fence was in place before we purchased our home.  This photo is much more recent than that, taken in an early spring before the perennial wildflowers started growing and after we'd pruned back the vines on the fence. 

Over the 55 years we've lived here, we trained a woody evergreen euonymus vine on the fence and planted native shrubs and wildflowers to create a green and woodsy environment supportive of wildlife, as well as sense of privacy in our backyard. I admit, it became a bit overgrown, and the flowers we planted struggled to hold their own against an unstoppable incursion of Bishop's Weed. But we still loved our lush green space in summer, and the evergreen vines continued their screening function throughout the winter.  Native goldenrods and asters and birdseed-sprouted sunflowers appeared as volunteers and we welcomed them into our space.

For all the years we have owned our home until about five years ago, the lot that adjoined our property to the rear stood vacant. The property was then sold twice, and last year the new owners had the plot re-surveyed and discovered that our fence intruded onto their property by just a few inches at one end.  The new owners planned to place a stone wall around the periphery of their lot and hoped to have that wall conform to the surveyed lot edges. So they requested that we take down our fence, or at least move the offending section of it.  I consulted a real-estate lawyer and learned that by virtue of that statute of "adverse possession" I mentioned above, we now actually could claim ownership of the land our old fence now stood on.  And to move (or remove) a chain-link fence entwined with 40-year-old woody vines would be too difficult for my husband and me to do it ourselves and too expensive to hire a contractor to do it for us.

OK, then, our new neighbors responded, how about they would remove the fence at their cost, and they would replace our old chain fence with a new fence of any style we might choose? So that's what we agreed to.  A very generous offer. This next photo shows our land with the old fence and its vines removed, and also the masses of Bishop's Weed that had come to crowd out the wildflowers I'd originally planted.

This next photo shows that weedy mess of Bishop's Weed has been back-hoed away and replaced with weed-free topsoil.

Now our neighbors could have their workers proceed to install their stone-textured concrete walls along their official property lines.

And now our beautiful new cedar lattice-topped fence stands ready to serve as a backdrop for whatever new plantings I'll choose. I'm not sure yet what those plantings will be, except that they will be native wild plants of benefit to whatever wildlife chooses to visit or inhabit our back yard.  A section of our old euonymus entwined chain-link fence still stands at the northern edge of our yard, and I hope the catbirds that always nested within it will return, once the construction noise and activity settle down on the neighboring land.

What had been a source of anxiety and potential animosity has now yielded to a sense of gratitude to our new neighbors for this exceptionally generous peace offering. I hope that now they can feel at peace about exactly where their property lies.  May they enjoy their beautiful new home in Saratoga Springs and come to know and enjoy the friendship of their new Saratoga neighbors on every side.