This is not a stately home and these grounds are not open to the public.

[Lace Neil Singer]

Or "Get off my lawn!" xD

Background: I live in a flat, which I rent from a private landlord, who works thru an agency. The flat is part of a block of flats, some of which are owned by the occupiers and some are rented from private landlords. With the flat comes two lawns. One which is situated next to the car park, and one round the front. It's the front lawn which seems to attract the problem. Both these lawns are owned and maintained by the landlords, who contribute towards their maintenence.

The problem is that recently, a few families have decided that rather than get off their fat arses and walk five minutes down the road to the lovely park where they are allowed to take their children to let off steam, they prefer to park their car next to the front lawn and let their screaming hellions run around like loons there. I'm not an unreasonable person, but it's the constant screeching along with the mass litter droppage that annoys me about these people and their offspring. I don't think that the parents would be all that keen if I were to sit down on their front lawn and throw litter about while screaming at the top of my lungs.

However, I have found that standing by my kitchen window seems to shift these people. XD I think that they spot me standing there, and it hammers it home to them that they are on private property, and they remove their kids sharpish. I've also, while standing there watching them disappear down the road, seen a traffic warden ticket the car left there in the permit only parking section. XD

[XCashier]

Some people are just so unbelievable! How can they not tell the difference between a public park and someone's front lawn?!

This happened to me twice when I lived at my house in Phoenix. The house was on a corner lot. One afternoon, a dozen kids gathered under the big jacaranda tree in the front yard. I saw them through the window, knocked on the window, they looked back and saw me looking through the window at them, got up and left.

Second time was in the evening, several young men on the front yard, yelling about beating someone up. Hubby, MIL and I went out to talk to them. They claimed they "didn't do nothing" even though we pointed out that they were trespassing. We had to threaten to call the police to get them to leave.

Eventually we planted sage hedges around the front yard. That kept the trespassers away until we moved out a few years ago. I recently looked at the house on Google maps; the jacaranda tree, hedges and roses are all gone. I don't know what the new owner is thinking, but I wonder if he's had to run off trespassers yet.

[taxguykarl]

Some people are just so unbelievable! How can they not tell the difference between a public park and someone's front lawn?!

They can tell--they just don't care. Notice that they left when they were being watched.
In the next to last apartment where I lived (before moving in with the future Mrs. TGK), there was a problem with kids hanging out in the courtyard. Never mind that it was less than 1000' from a nice city park.

[Lace Neil Singer]

I'm just hoping that the nice parking fines these people end up paying when they leave their car in the permit only parking space will eventually cause it to filter thru that what they're doing is a bad idea.

[Jay 2K Winger]

This reminds me of something the used to happen at our house when the neighborhood kids were still in elementary school.

Our house's front yard is in the shade almost all day. Except for a short window in the morning, it goes in the shade and stays there. This means that, in the winter time, our yard is still covered in snow long after every other house's yard has melted just from daylight exposure.

Naturally, the neighborhood kids saw a yard with a noticeable (but nowhere close to steep) incline, covered in snow, and they thought, "Hey, sledding!"

We put up with it very briefly until they left one of their sleds in our yard. Then we made it known "Any toys that get left in our yard, we're keeping."

They stopped trying to sled in our yard.

[Seshat]

I don't remember the source of the quote, but "Good fences make good neighbours."

Unless your place is already fenced, use a fence or hedge to mark the edge of your property. (If it already is .. I guess the next step is enforcing trespassing restrictions.)

[XCashier]

I don't remember the source of the quote, but "Good fences make good neighbours."

Robert Frost.

Yeah, that's why we went with the hedge. It worked too, even though it was young and there were sizeable gaps in it. Next house we get, we'll do something similar.

[Sheldonrs]

Robert Frost.

Yeah, that's why we went with the hedge. It worked too, even though it was young and there were sizeable gaps in it. Next house we get, we'll do something similar.

It's actually an indictment of fences in general. I never understood how it ended up getting used as a pro fence rallying cry.

[April]

When we lived in a trailer park, our yard became a popular "cut through" for some reason. Usually by small children and teenagers. If I caught them, I would head outside to yell at them, but I would often miss them. Then Halloween happened.

My husband and I LOVE Halloween. And we go all out. We have a decoration that we made, which we have named "Hangin' Hugh". Quite literally, it looks like a guy in a hockey mask hanging by his neck in a tree (I know some people think this is in bad taste, but we've never had an issue) So we decorated for Halloween, including Hugh, who happened to be hanging on the back side of the tree, not super visible from the road. That night I was standing by the kitchen window doing dishes, when I see the shapes of two teens walking though the yard. I was about to go out to yell at them, when they saw Hugh. All I heard was "OH SHIT" and they tore out of the yard. Never seemed to have an issue after that

[Ben_Who]

Apparently, a while ago, some of the homeowners on Main Street a couple of towns south of us were having trouble with tourists just walking in the front doors of their houses. Granted, these are historic eighteenth-century brick mansions and gorgeous white Greek Revival homes, but I doubt a museum would have a barbecue on the front patio and a discarded Cozy Coupe in the driveway.

Then I discovered that the apartment complex across the main road from ours was having a similar problem. My neighborhood looks like Levittown; that one looks like an Ivy League university, with multiple brick colonials surrounding a central multi-unit, and a multi-use business office called, for good reason, "the Castle." They're not bothered by people playing on the rolling greens, but they've had to dissuade explorers.