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Can your neighbor take back long-provided shade?

Posted by talkdirt

Posted: May 13, 2008 - 5:32 pm

Mike writes: Randy Cohen, the New York Times ethics columist, revisited some of his recently given advice Sunday -- including his opine that J.T.'s neighbor had a legal but not moral right to "cut down a tree on his own property if doing so deprived J.T. of privacy, shade, oxygen and beauty." That's a lot of deprivation, of course, but many readers disagreed, arguing in favor of property rights.

"Some declared that if J.T. wanted these leafy benefits," Cohen wrote this week, "he should plant his own trees on his property. I considered that but dismissed it as impractical -- saplings take years to reach privacy-producing height -- and thus was undone not by my moral reasoning but my arboreal ignorance. Botanically savvy readers suggested varities of trees, shrubs and ornamental grasses that grow quickly. (A gleefully vindictive fellow proposed planting bamboo that would swiftly overrun the grounds of the tree-slaughtering neighbor.) One person suggested that a landscape architect could design small mounds or terraces to give young trees an instant boost in height. Others pointed out this happy consequence of J.T.'s planting his own trees: They would stand as a verdant rebuke to his neighbor. (As Joyce Kilmer did not write: I think that I shall never see / A poem vengeful as a tree.)"

All of the above is food for thought, though I shudder at the prospect of an ornamental grass that provides a lot of shade. (How big IS it?) And how one unleashes a running-variety of bamboo toward a neighbor without any backblow beats me -- but that idea was a joke, one hopes.

While we're thinking happy thoughts about trees, don't forget that Alaska Arbor Day will be celebrated Monday, May 19 at Rabbit Creek Elementary School (13650 Lake Otis Parkway). Good souls will be out to plant two evergreen trees at 2 p.m. Be there if you can.

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2 May 14, 2008 - 4:53pm | dsharrow

Lack of shade - How about lack of sun?

Sounds like an interesting precedent. Maybe I could go after my neighbor for allowing his now towering cottonwoods to deprive me of the sun that fueled a once nicely producing garden?

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1 May 14, 2008 - 10:44am | tagalak

Whose tree is it - a lofty question~

First off, welcome back to the Greatland, Mike. Trees are living legacies..we enjoy planting them (sometimes incorrectly - unlike Mother Nature) and they provide so many benefits. There's a great ditty about "Everything I ever needed to know, I learned from a Tree" that would be something to read while supping a glass of wine in ones treed in backyard... Yep, trees are our future, it's a no brainer!

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Can your neighbor take back long-provided shade?