Falling garden leaves: rules for neighbours in France and can you burn them?
Trees should be planted far enough away from your garden to avoid significant leaf fall
The city has this year picked up 500 tonnes of fallen leaves and sent them to the methanisation biogas factory
zikko2020 / Shutterstock
Autumn is in full swing in France, with leaves beginning to fall from trees across most of the country.
Whilst this leads to some beautiful views, closer to home it can become a nuisance, with leaves from your garden constantly requiring clean up.
In addition, leaves from your neighbour’s gardens may fall into your land, making the task even more difficult.
If leaves repeatedly fall into your garden it can be classed as a nuisance and is grounds for complaint – especially if they do not clean them up.
Below, we cover the rules on cleaning up fallen leaves during the autumn.
Do not plant trees too close to property edges
The first thing to note is the rules surrounding tree placement.
The French Civil Code states that trees taller than two metres (or intended to grow to this height or taller) must be planted at least two metres away from property boundaries.
Trees growing to less than this must be 50cm or more away. These rules should, in most instances, prevent too many leaves falling into your garden from neighbours’ trees.
If these rules are not respected, you can go to a conciliateur de justice (more on this below) to explain the situation, and your neighbour may be obliged to cut the tree down – unless it is above a certain age.
Read more: French law: Can I cut an overhanging branch from neighbour’s tree?
Attempt an amicable solution
If these rules are respected but it does not prevent the problem, the first step is to ask the neighbour to come and clean up the leaves themselves.
If you have a good relationship with your neighbour, this should not be too much of an issue – just make sure to give them permission to enter your property (and vice versa, gain permission if you need to clean up leaves from someone else’s garden).
If it is a repeated problem, making a document setting out the rules (how often, what type of leaves, if you are both responsible for your own gardens instead of each other’s, etc) and both signing it, can be useful.
Failing this, if the problem is excessive and significant (i.e, lots of leaf fall and no effort from the neighbour to help clear it), you can go to a conciliateur de justice to try and settle the dispute amicably.
Read more: How to handle disputes with your neighbours in France
If this fails, you may be able to take your neighbour to court, but you must try and resolve it amicably first (with proof) or the court will not hear your case.
The court may order the tree removed, or for the neighbour to clean it, but payment for damages is unlikely unless the tree’s position has caused a secondary issue (loss of sunlight, grow of moss or mould, etc).
Can I burn fallen leaves?
When collecting fallen leaves, there may be a temptation to burn them.
However, the burning of garden waste (déchets verts) is strictly forbidden no matter the time of year, and dead leaves are counted as this type of waste.
Alternatives are to compost or mulch the leaves, or take them to a special green tip.
If you have no garden waste recycling centres near you, you can ask your mairie for permission to burn the waste in a bonfire, but they are not guaranteed to say yes.
