Have you ever been annoyed by something planted in your neighbor’s yard?

Maybe it’s a tree, vine or hedge that hangs into your yard or drops annoying leaves, flowers or seeds that you have to clean up.

Would you ever complain to your neighbor about this plant, or would you simply clean up the mess?

In today’s story, one neighbor is sick of trimming their next door neighbor’s hedge and decides to confront them about it.

What they didn’t realize is that this was the opportunity the hedge owners needed to do something drastic.

Let’s see what happens.

Neighbor complains about maintaining a hedge wall and then has to construct a wooden fence

This story happened about a decade ago when I was still a teenager and used to live in my parents’ house.

We are migrants and are on good terms with all the neighbors since the 90s but we do have a reputation in the neighborhood of frequently undertaking ambitious DYI home improvements and in an atypical manner to what locals expect.

Our house is separated from the neighbors with a living hedge wall of cypress trees that grow on our property.

At the time of this story, we already lived in the house for the better part of the decade with the same neighbors and the same cypress trees.

The neighbors were pretty upset about the hedge.

One day out of the blue, one of the neighbors sees my mom working in the garden and starts complaining about the state of the living hedge on her side of the property.

We usually trim the hedge only from our side and most of the top that we can reach.

The neighbor complains and demands us to trim the hedge from their side as well.

In her eyes, as the hedge wall is planted on our property, it’s 100% our responsibility and they are tired of maintaining it from their side.

The altercation is very brief as my mother surprisingly quickly replies “OK” and walks off grinning.

This was just the excuse they needed to do something they wanted to do anyway.

Unbeknown to the neighbor, we already were planning to cut down the hedges to the stump so that they could regrow anew, as the existing hedge was very old and was not particularly sightly.

Previously we postponed these works as we did not want to upset the neighbors, but this demand provided the perfect excuse.

So the next day while the neighbors are at work, we cut down all the hedges surrounding our property to barely above ground.

The neighbors weren’t expecting that!

As we are finishing clearing up the trimmings the neighbors come back home from work shocked to discover the hedge practically gone.

They look around and realize that with the hedge wall gone, their whole backyard, kitchen, living room and bedroom are on full display through the windows.

The neighbor questions what have we done and why as they would no longer have any privacy in their own home.

My mom without missing a beat replies “we fixed the problem, the hedge will no longer need trimming from your side” and goes back to clearing up.

The neighbors really wanted their privacy back!

Within a week the neighbors came back to us and asked for permission to construct a wooden fence on our property to protect their privacy.

We happily agreed as long as they paid for it all, as we didn’t mind waiting a couple of years for the hedge to regrow (our privacy was much less impacted).

They built the fence within the week and it provided a good surface for some vine flowers to grow instead of the cypress trees that my mother had wanted to plant for a long time.

That worked out perfectly! Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This person thinks there will eventually be more problems.

Another person didn’t like the story.

This is a good question.

There would’ve been another way to solve the privacy problem.

As the saying goes, good fences make good neighbors!

Definitely true in this case.

If you liked that post, check this one about a guy who got revenge on his condo by making his own Christmas light rules.