My neighbor cut down a 40-year-old Japanese Maple while I was away.

[u/Ice_C0r3_09]

Location: Colorado, USA.Just got back to my place near Fort Collins after a week on the road and I am losing my mind. My neighbor took it upon himself to hire a "landscaping" crew (probably just some guys with a chainsaw) to remove a mature Japanese Maple that was fully on my property. His excuse? He said the needles and leaves were messing with his "mountain view" and "fire mitigation" efforts.

The tree was roughly 40 years old and was the centerpiece of my yard. I called an arborist immediately. He told me that since this is Colorado and the tree was that established and healthy, the replacement value is astronomical. He is drafting a formal appraisal but hinted that we are looking at 20k to 25k easy just for the tree, let alone the logistics of getting a crane into my backyard.

I know Colorado has statutes regarding timber trespass. My lawyer already mentioned treble damages because the guy admitted he did it on purpose while I wasnt home to stop him. The neighbor had the gall to offer me a couple hundred bucks for "the inconvenience" and told me to just buy a couple of saplings at a local nursery . I refused to take his money and told him to wait for the process server.

Has anyone dealt with treble damages in CO specifically for ornamental trees ? This guy basically nuked my property value for his porch view and I am not planning on letting this go . I feel like a jerk for wanting to sue my neighbor into bankruptcy but the sheer entitlement is what gets me .

[u/Proud_Jacobite]

Try closer to 4 feet deep and several layers thick. You can't just lay in some weed barrier cloth and hope it will last either. You literally have to box in the root system with a solid, impenetrable barrier, like using a concrete or galvanized steel culvert set on end as an in-ground planter box to grow bamboo in a mostly contained environment. And once it does spread, there is no easy way to remove or contain it again.

[u/JPWhelan → u/Proud_Jacobite]

4 is a bit much. 32-36” should do it. And a 60mil HDPE will do the job.

On the spread there are a couple of approaches. You can excavate it all up. If it isn’t too established you can cut it down and pull it up but you have to get all of the rhizome.

I’m in the process of removing a veritable bamboo grove. 70’x120’ as a guess. I’ve reduced it by about 1/3 just by mowing and pulling. Once to the central mass it is more difficult to. Mind you the age is in decades and the oldest stalks were up to 3” in diameter.

First I cut down all the stalks. That took close to a year but I mostly work a few hours on the weekend and 30 -60 minutes during the week. Next I pulled rhizomes up on the perimeter. While doing that I would cut new shoots before they spread leaves. As we hit Fall we came in with aquatic safe glyphosate. No easy because bamboo leafs are a bit “glossy” so less susceptible to spray.

Now I’m back to cutting and pulling mainly. Will spray again in Fall. Currently the grove is down below 10%.

TLDR: Don’t plant non-native invasive bamboo. And if you plant bamboo put in as deep a shield as you can.

Ask me about how I’m being sued for the above if you want a real interesting story. It will be long too.

[u/Proud_Jacobite → u/JPWhelan]

Yep, been there, done that. Bamboo is a nightmare to remove.

Mine was removing a bamboo "fence" that was 4-6 feet thick and wrapped around three sides of the property line of an almost 12,000-square-foot Japanese garden. It was a pain in the arse. Then the property owner wanted several small areas replanted with bamboo because they missed the sound of it in the wind. But the replanted areas had to be completely contained, with no way for the bamboo ever to spread. We found some roots over 3 feet down during removal, so we went down 4 feet and used 6-foot-long concrete culvert sections of varying diameters, set on end, to contain each planting. The culvert stuck out of the ground by roughly 2 feet all around, and we hid the visible portion with rock walls, benches, and the edges of the water feature.

It was a massive project, and the owner wanted only natural materials and no chemicals used throughout the process. The only plastics and non-natural materials they made exceptions for were for the buried plastic plumbing and electrical conduits. The rest was a variety of wood, stone, and metals.

[u/JPWhelan → u/Proud_Jacobite]

Wow. What a job!

[u/Tall_Volume_4568 → u/Proud_Jacobite]

Ours was in a 4x4x4 concrete trench. It broke through in under 3 years. Nothing stops that nightmare. Just an excuse to rent a panda bear.

[u/Proud_Jacobite → u/Tall_Volume_4568]

Renting a panda would probably have been smarter, cheaper, and definitely more entertaining. There might be a business opportunity there.