Hecke, Baum und Grenzabstand: Boundary Distances for Plants in All 16 Bundesländer

How close to the property line a hedge, shrub or tree may be planted is the most frequently asked question in German neighbour law, and it is the question with no federal answer. Search the BGB for a Grenzabstand and you will not find one, because the BGB does not set plant boundary distances at all.

Those distances are Land law. Twelve of the sixteen Bundesländer set them in a dedicated Nachbarrechtsgesetz, Bavaria keeps equivalent rules inside its Ausführungsgesetz zum BGB, and three, namely Bremen, Hamburg and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, have no such rules at all. The number that governs your hedge therefore depends on which Bundesland the hedge grows in, and there is nothing federal to fall back on if you get the Land wrong.

This page gives a Bundesland by Bundesland table, sets out the federal provisions that do apply everywhere, explains the § 910 BGB self help right over roots and overhanging branches together with the limits people routinely overlook, and covers the time limits that quietly end a claim to have a plant cut back.

Information last verified on 20 July 2026. This page provides general legal information and does not constitute legal advice in an individual case.

Why there is no federal number

The BGB deliberately left this field to the Länder, and Art. 124 EGBGB preserves that Land competence. The federal code handles what happens once a plant is there, and leaves how far away it must be planted to Land legislation.

§ 907 BGB makes the split explicit in one detail that surprises people. It allows an owner to require that Anlagen not be maintained on neighbouring land where an inadmissible effect is certain to follow, and then § 907 Abs. 2 BGB states that trees and shrubs are not Anlagen within the meaning of those provisions. Plants are carved out of the federal installation regime precisely because they belong to the Land regime.

The consequence for a reader is a practical one. A guide that gives a single German distance figure is describing one Land and presenting it as national. The correct first step is always to identify the Bundesland, then the statute.

The 16 Bundesländer at a glance

Every figure in this table has either been read directly in the statutory text on the responsible Land legislation portal, or is marked as not verified. We would rather publish an honest gap than a complete looking table with an invented number in it, because a wrong distance is exactly the kind of error that leads somebody to cut something down.

All sixteen rows below were verified. Thirteen rest on statutory text read in full on the responsible Land legislation portal, and the remaining three record a verified negative, meaning the Land portal was searched and no such statute was found to exist there.

On Mecklenburg-Vorpommern one qualification belongs in the open. A search of the Land legislation portal for both Nachbarrecht and Grenzabstand returned no Nachbarrechtsgesetz and no statutory planting distance, which confirms the position. The qualification is that § 3 Nr. 7 of the Rechtsbereinigungs- und Rechtsfortgeltungsgesetz Mecklenburg-Vorpommern exempts private neighbour law that continued to apply as Land law beyond 2 October 1990 from the general repeal, so historic private neighbour law was not abolished wholesale. Nothing of it is published or consolidated in the Land portal, and there is no modern Mecklenburg-Vorpommern statute setting a plant distance.

Reading a Land distance rule correctly

The number is only half of the rule. Three further elements decide how it actually applies, and Bavaria illustrates each of them.

Where the measurement starts. Art. 49 AGBGB measures the distance from the centre of the trunk at the point where it emerges from the ground, for shrubs and hedges from the centre of the shoots nearest the boundary, and for hops from the pole or the climbing wire. Measuring from the outer edge of the foliage, which is what most people do instinctively, produces the wrong answer.

What is excepted. Art. 50 Abs. 1 AGBGB disapplies the distance rules to plants standing behind a wall or other dense enclosure that they do not, or do not significantly, project above. The same provision excepts planting along a public road or square, and planting serving bank protection, slope protection or the protection of a railway. Art. 50 Abs. 2 AGBGB adds stone fruit and pome fruit trees and trees in a farmyard or house garden to the exceptions from the agricultural distance rule in Art. 48 Abs. 1.

What the rule does not cover. A Land distance provision governs where a plant may stand. It is not a general height limit on a hedge, and it does not by itself give a neighbour a right to a view or to a particular amount of light. Those questions run on different arguments, often under § 906 BGB and § 1004 BGB, and they are considerably harder than a distance measurement.

A worked example

Take a garden in Bavaria. A row of hornbeam is planted so that the centre of the shoots nearest the boundary sits 0,80 m from the line, and it is kept trimmed at 1,80 m. Under Art. 47 Abs. 1 AGBGB the relevant tier is the one for plants not over 2 m tall, which requires 0,50 m, so at 0,80 m the planting complies.

Now let the same hedge grow to 2,30 m. The plant is over 2 m tall, so the applicable requirement becomes 2 m from the boundary, and at 0,80 m it no longer complies. The breach is created by the growth, not by the original planting, which is why these disputes so often surface years after anything was actually planted.

The timing then matters. Art. 52 Abs. 1 Satz 2 AGBGB gives the claim for removal of a state of affairs breaching Art. 47 a five year Verjährungsfrist, and Satz 3 starts that period at the end of the year in which the claim arose and the owner obtained, or without gross negligence ought to have obtained, knowledge of the circumstances founding it. A neighbour who watches a hedge exceed 2 m and does nothing for years can therefore find the claim time barred, though Art. 52 Abs. 2 AGBGB provides that where the plants are replaced by new ones after the claim has become time barred, compliance with the prescribed distance can be demanded in respect of the new plants.

The Ausschlussfristen that quietly end a claim

Bavaria is not unusual in cutting off the claim after a period. Most of the Länder with a planting statute do the same thing, and the periods are short enough that a neighbour who waits can lose the point entirely. This is the part of the subject that most often decides a real dispute, and it is almost never mentioned in general guides.

The mechanisms are not identical, and the difference matters. Some Länder use an Ausschlussfrist tied to filing an action by the end of a stated calendar year. Others use an ordinary Verjährung on the BGB model. A few provide that particular claims never become time barred at all.

Several of these statutes also carry their own closed season, running in parallel with the federal rule. § 13 Abs. 2 SächsNRG and § 39 NbG in Sachsen-Anhalt each exclude a cutting or removal obligation between 1 March and 30 September, and § 51 Abs. 2 ThürNRG provides that the cutting back duty need only be performed between 1 October and 28 February.

§ 910 BGB: the self help right and its real limits

§ 910 BGB is the most quoted and most misdescribed provision in this area. It is worth reading in its actual structure rather than in the shorthand version.

§ 910 Abs. 1 Satz 1 BGB allows the owner of a property to cut off and keep roots of a tree or shrub that have penetrated from a neighbouring property. That part is unconditional as against the neighbour, subject to Abs. 2.

§ 910 Abs. 1 Satz 2 BGB treats overhanging branches differently, and this is the sentence that is usually dropped. The same right applies to overhanging branches only where the owner has set the possessor of the neighbouring property a reasonable period for removal and the removal has not been carried out within that period. The deadline is a precondition, not a courtesy.

§ 910 Abs. 2 BGB then removes the right in either case where the roots or the branches do not impair the use of the property. Growth that merely crosses the line without causing any interference does not open the provision at all.

Three further constraints sit on top of the provision. § 39 Abs. 5 Satz 1 Nr. 2 BNatSchG prohibits cutting hedges, living fences, bushes and other woody plants back to the stock or removing them between 1 March and 30 September, subject to the carve-out for growth on gärtnerisch genutzte Grundflächen whose reach into a domestic garden is contested, while expressly permitting gentle shaping and maintenance cuts to remove the season's growth or to keep a tree healthy, and the Land governments are empowered to extend or shift that period. A municipal Baumschutzsatzung can require permission before a protected tree is worked on regardless of anything in the BGB. And the self help right is a right to cut what overhangs, exercised from one's own side of the boundary, not a right to enter the neighbour's land.

This page explains the provision. It does not tell any reader to cut anything, and whether a particular cut is lawful depends on facts, on the plant, on the Land and on local protection rules that only the reader can establish.

Fruit, boundary trees and what happens at the line itself

Two short BGB provisions settle questions that otherwise generate a great deal of argument.

§ 911 BGB provides that fruit falling from a tree or shrub onto a neighbouring property counts as fruit of that property, so windfall belongs to the garden it lands in. The provision does not apply where the neighbouring property serves public use, so fruit falling onto a public path is not covered by the same rule.

§ 923 BGB deals with a Grenzbaum, a tree standing on the boundary itself. The fruit, and the tree if felled, belong to the neighbours in equal shares. Either neighbour may demand the removal of the tree, with the costs falling on both in equal shares, save that the neighbour demanding removal bears the costs alone if the other renounces their right in the tree, in which case that other acquires sole ownership on separation. The claim for removal is excluded where the tree serves as a boundary marker and cannot in the circumstances be replaced by another suitable marker. § 923 Abs. 3 BGB applies the same rules to a shrub standing on the boundary.

Before a court: the Schlichtung step

A planting dispute in several Länder cannot go straight to court. § 15a Abs. 1 ZPOEG allows a Bundesland to provide that an action may be brought only after an attempted settlement before a Gütestelle set up or recognised by the Land justice administration, and the categories listed include neighbour law claims under §§ 910, 911 and 923 BGB and under § 906 BGB, as well as claims under the Land law provisions within the meaning of Art. 124 EGBGB, where the effects do not come from a commercial operation.

The claimant must file with the action a certificate from the Gütestelle recording an unsuccessful attempt at settlement. § 15a Abs. 1 Satz 3 ZPOEG requires that certificate to be issued on application if the requested conciliation procedure has not been carried out within three months, so the requirement cannot be used to stall indefinitely. § 15a Abs. 2 ZPOEG lists exclusions and disapplies the requirement where the parties do not live, or have their seat or a branch, in the same Land.

Related pages

The wider structure of German neighbour law, including the three layers of federal, Land and municipal rules, is mapped at German neighbour law. For noise rather than planting, see noise disturbance and neighbour complaints and quiet hours in Germany, which explains why the familiar 22:00 to 06:00 Nachtruhe is a local rule rather than a federal one. Where a garden dispute has escalated to a camera, see neighbour surveillance cameras. Other topics are at German law explained.

Under § 2 RDG, advice in an individual case is a regulated Rechtsdienstleistung in Germany. This page sets out the rules and does not assess any reader's own dispute or its prospects. Readers with a live disagreement about a boundary planting should take advice from a Rechtsanwalt and check the statute of their own Bundesland directly on the Land legislation portal.

Frequently asked questions