Neighbors Kept Cutting Through a Renter’s Front Garden and Side Gate to Save About a Minute on the Walk to the Shops

A renter who has lived in his home for six months keeps seeing the same thing from his living room window: people from the cul-de-sac behind his house walking through his front garden and out his side gate on their way to the shops. The shortcut saves them about a minute, TwistedSifter reported on Nov. 12.

He has started telling people to stop. At least one of them has kept doing it anyway.

A back-to-back house with the parking behind it

According to TwistedSifter writer Chris Allen, the home sits back-to-back with the houses behind it. The front faces a main road with no driveway and no parking allowed. The parking is at the back, off a cul-de-sac, and a side gate he shares with a detached neighbor leads from the front garden to that rear driveway.

That layout makes his garden the quickest route from the cul-de-sac to the main road. Rather than walking the main path up the cul-de-sac and around, many residents simply come through the gate, cross his front garden and head for the shops.

He told readers he has never even spoken to most of the people cutting through. Some of them stare in at him while he sits in his living room. He called the use of his garden as a public right of way “an invasion of privacy and inconsiderate of local residents.”

The woman who said they had always used it

The one exchange described in detail involved a woman and her young son. When he politely asked her not to use the gate as a cut-through, she told him they had always used it. She later came back and was seen cutting through again, the article said.

He does not want to lock the gate, because his neighbor uses it too and a lock would be a hassle for both households. Instead, he is considering telling residents directly not to use it whenever he catches them. Commenters suggested curtains he could keep closed and, despite his hesitation, a lock, which one called “really necessary.”

Why years of use can matter

The woman’s answer touches on a real legal idea. Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute explains that a prescriptive easement is a right to use someone else’s land gained through long-term use rather than by agreement. The use generally has to be open, without the owner’s permission, and continuous for a period set by state law. In Oregon, for example, that period is 10 years.

Permission is the key detail. Use that happens with the owner’s okay generally does not count toward that kind of claim, and use the owner openly objects to is on a different footing from use the owner quietly allows. For a garden that has been a neighborhood shortcut for years, a clear request to stop from the current resident or the property owner is a meaningful step. Rules vary by place, and a renter’s options also depend on the landlord who owns the property.

The Legal Information Institute’s entry on trespass to land adds that it is an intentional tort that does not require proof of damage. A person only has to intend to enter the land, whether or not they think of it as trespassing.

Plants that do the asking

When a lock is not practical, gardeners often use plants to change how people move through a yard. Scott Hininger of University of Wyoming Extension in Sheridan County recommends barrier plants with thorns or sharp points, including rugosa roses, whose thorns catch on anything that brushes them, and barberries, which grow dense with small, needle-like spines. He also lists thorny flowering quince, Russian hawthorn, native plum and buffalo berry, the last three of which are drought tolerant.

For softer screening, Mississippi State University Extension suggests mixing species rather than planting a single row, staggering plants in a zigzag or grouping them in threes and fives, and avoiding invasive varieties. Trees and shrubs are usually best planted in winter, during their dormant season.

Neither option fixes a shared gate overnight. But a planted border along the garden, combined with a clear message to the neighbors, is often how a front garden goes back to being a garden instead of a footpath. The renter, for now, is still asking.

This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.

Image: Hywel72 – CC BY-SA 3.0/Wikimedia Commons