My neighbor’s robot mower keeps crossing into my flower bed. Do I move it back or ask them to fix the boundary first?

The small green mower appeared beside my roses like a confused turtle.

My next-door neighbor bought an automatic lawn mower this summer. Most days it moves quietly around his grass, turns near the edges and returns to a charging station. Twice this week, it crossed the narrow strip between our lawns and entered my flower bed.

The first time, I lifted it by the handle and placed it back on his grass. The second time, it clipped two young plants before stopping in the mulch. I turned it off and texted him a photo.

He replied, “It must have lost the boundary signal,” and asked me to set it near the charging station if it happened again. That request sounded simple until I imagined becoming the unpaid recovery service for a machine I did not choose.

I do not mind returning it once. I do mind watching the flower bed every afternoon or carrying equipment across his yard. I also do not want to damage the mower by handling it incorrectly. I have not read the manual and should not be responsible for troubleshooting it.

Our lawns meet without a fence. The visual boundary is clear to humans because the grass changes color slightly and my bed begins at a curved stone edge. The machine apparently needs something more precise. That is the owner’s problem to solve, but I want to say so without sounding hostile to the technology itself.

My partner wants to place a low decorative barrier around the flowers. We had considered one anyway, but installing it solely to contain the neighbor’s mower transfers the cost and upkeep to us. It may also interfere with trimming our side.

The neighbor is enthusiastic about gadgets and tends to treat glitches as temporary. He may genuinely believe the next software update or wire adjustment will solve this. Meanwhile, the plants are real and growing now.

Would you tell him the mower must stay off until he confirms the boundary works, simply notify him each time and leave it where it stops, or add your own barrier? What is a fair expectation when an automated device repeatedly crosses a line its owner cannot personally see it cross?