Maintaining your forest property boundaries

In bygone days, before property maps and written titles, it was customary in England to “beat the bounds” of the parish every seven years to establish a mutual understanding of property boundaries—a process in which participants literally swatted the property perimeter with sticks. 

Nowadays, licensed surveyors are tasked with defining property boundaries, and they use various tools and markings to do so. But in a living, growing, changing forest, survey marks diminish over time as witness trees die or blow over, hatcheted blazes heal up, and paint fades. 

A clearly marked property boundary can help prevent both accidental and intentional trespass. We recommend that landowners check and refresh surveyed boundary marks every 5 years or so. You can undertake this yourself, and we’ll detail the process below. It’s a great way to get to know your forest! If you’d prefer, VFF’s conservation forester, Ralph Tursini, can be hired to carry out this work as well.

The process of locating existing boundary markings can be a lot like a treasure hunt, since old blazes can be hard to locate once paint fades. The most important thing to remember is that only a licensed surveyor can establish boundaries—all that you or we can do is to refresh any existing markings. If too much time passes before the marks are refreshed and they disappear, you will need to hire a surveyor to reestablish the boundaries.

Here’s the scoop on marking your own boundaries. You can download a pdf of these instructions here.

Important notes before getting started

• It’s best to let neighbors know in advance that you plan to refresh the boundary markings. 
• Be sure to only refresh existing boundary blazes where you actually see old paint—do not add new blazes. 
• Try to apply paint when the trees are dry.
• When repainting a blaze, leave a small patch of the existing paint visible as reference (don’t paint over it completely.)
• Work as neatly and tidily as possible.
• One mile of boundary line generally requires one gallon of high-quality paint. VFF tested latex paint and found that it did not hold up nearly as well as oil-based paint. We now recommend and use Nelson Boundary Paint – RED, brush type.

Instructions for refreshing boundary markings

1. Identify your boundaries. Using your survey map or UVA property map, walk the boundary to identify the blazes and monumentation with which the surveyor marked the property boundaries. UVA maps created by VFF are digitally compatible with the free Avenza mapping program. By downloading this map app to a smartphone, and uploading your VFF map to the app, you can see not only see your property, but also where you are on the map in real time, which helps a lot with locating boundary lines.
2. Repaint blazes with brightly colored, oil-based paint, leaving some of the old paint visible.

• Surveyors blaze centerline trees (trees located right on the property line) on either side of the tree where the property line intersects with the trunk. Refresh the paint on those blazes with a 2″x6″ vertical mark at each point.

• Surveyors mark trees on either side and within 10 feet of the property line with a blaze that faces the boundary line. Refresh these blazes with a single 3- to 4-inch-wide band facing the property line.

• Corner monumentation is usually marked on 3 witness trees located within 5′ of the corner. These witness trees each receive three 3- to 4-inch-wide bands on the side of the tree directly facing the corner stake or post. It’s best to simply flag monumentation if there is any doubt about its location.

3. Cut away limbs or brush that hide existing blazes from view.

4. Maintain corner monuments by cutting away brush and dead limbs around the monument. Simply flag the monumentation if there is any doubt about its location. Paint only the monument itself, not the whole mound of stones. Repaint witness tree blazes. If the monument is in bad shape or missing, contact a licensed land surveyor to perform re-monumentation.

Take a look below at some examples of how old boundary blazes can look–you can see why they can be so tricky to find! (all photos, Ralph Tursini).