Whether you’re green fingered or not, everyone can appreciate the beauty of a well-maintained backyard.

But when it comes to actually maintaining it, this is a very divisive activity.

Some people love gardening, finding it rewarding or therapeutic, while for others it’s yet another chore on a long list of things they need to do week after week.

But when the woman in this story found that her yard was not only full of prickly plants, but they were threatening her home too, she was understandably frustrated.

Read on to find out how these blackberry bushes caused a stalemate between her and her landlord.

AITA for insisting my landlord pay for invasive blackberry removal that’s creating safety hazards?

I am a 28-year-old woman, and live with my girlfriend, who is 25, and our roommate, a 32-year-old man in a rental house. We’re all on the lease together.

We moved in during winter, in January, and there had been a big windstorm before we moved in that knocked down a tree in the backyard. Our landlord said he’d have someone take care of it.

There were also some blackberry bushes on the side of the house that looked totally manageable since they were dormant, plus there’s an old wired fence hidden in bushes along our wooden fence (we’re on a corner lot).

Let’s see how their backyard escalated through their lease.

Fast forward to May, and these blackberry bushes started going completely over the fence.

By the end of May, both my girlfriend and I were reaching out to our landlord telling him it was getting really bad, and we started looking for landscaping companies to handle the problem.

At the beginning of June, my girlfriend reached out to a handyman who gave her a quote of $2500 including root removal, and I got a quote from a landscaping company for $4300 without root removal.

We forwarded both quotes to our landlord, and he said he was going to do more research and see if he could find someone cheaper.

Read on to find out what happened once they’d passed the issue on.

We haven’t heard from him since then.

So last week I decided to get another quote from a different contractor, and this one came back at $2200 including root removal.

By now, the blackberries have completely taken over. They’re fully into the backyard, reaching onto our neighbor’s property, seeding and bearing fruit, covering our dryer vent and AC unit.

They’re also starting to cover my bedroom window that’s on the side of the house, and they’ve completely covered that fallen tree in the backyard that he said he’d take care of months ago.

So the couple and their roommate decided to take action.

When I got this latest quote, my girlfriend sent our landlord recent pictures of both the backyard and the side of the house to show him how bad it had gotten.

That’s when he finally responded saying he’s fine with getting someone to trim them and remove the debris from the fallen tree, but he’s not dropping over $5000 for a full removal. He said he has a source for someone who can probably do it for a more reasonable price, and he’ll reach out.

Here’s where I might be the ******* – all three of us at the house want to push this issue, but I’m definitely more angry and blunt about it than my girlfriend and roommate. My girlfriend said she should handle the communication with our landlord, because we want to maintain a good relationship with him, and I completely agreed.

I’ve actually stopped responding in our group message because honestly, I don’t have anything nice to say to him at this point. My girlfriend is very diplomatic and really good with her words, so I completely support everything she’s said to him.

Let’s see what this woman’s girlfriend said to their landlord.

She sent him a thoughtful message explaining that this has escalated way beyond normal maintenance, that these are invasive species creating safety hazards around our appliances, and that they’re spreading to the neighbor’s property.

She offered a compromise where we would pay the $2200 upfront ourselves, and then get $300 off our monthly rent until it’s paid back, since this would add significant value to his property and solve the problem permanently.

He got defensive and said he doesn’t want to spend thousands on “blackberry removal he didn’t particularly desire” and that since the lease says yard maintenance is our responsibility, he doesn’t think he owes us a “major improvement.”

My girlfriend pointed out to him that they’re affecting our AC access, and that we’ll have to deal with this every single year if we don’t get proper removal, but he still won’t pay for it.

So the woman tried to find another way.

Now I’m considering another option: letting his handyman trim them back first, then hiring our own contractor afterward to do the root removal, which should be much cheaper since they’d already be cut back, and we’d just pay for it ourselves.

The thing is, we literally can’t access our AC unit for maintenance anymore, and these things are covering my bedroom window.

His handyman solution feels like putting a band-aid on something that’s just going to cost way more money long-term, especially since we’ve already been waiting for months while this problem got exponentially worse.

The lease does say yard maintenance is our responsibility, and there were blackberries there when we moved in (even though they were dormant), but I accept the removal cost really is significant, and I’m admittedly pretty angry about this whole situation, which might be clouding my judgment.

However, there’s more to the situation than just ‘yard maintenance’.

But we moved in during winter when the blackberries were dormant, so we couldn’t see how extensive this problem would become.

We’ve been trying to address this since May, getting multiple quotes and keeping him informed, while he’s been dragging his feet saying he’ll find someone cheaper.

Meanwhile this has turned into actual safety hazards with major appliances, it’s spreading to the neighbor’s property, and these are invasive species that require professional removal rather than regular maintenance.

The problem existed when we moved in and was always going to get worse, plus there’s still that fallen tree he said he’d take care of that’s now completely buried under blackberries.

This has left the woman with quite the conundrum.

Am I wrong for being angry about this situation and wanting to keep pushing, even though I’ve let my girlfriend handle the communication?

Should we just pay the $2200 ourselves, try the compromise option of letting his handyman trim first then hiring our contractor for the remaining work, or just let him have his handyman hack at them and deal with the same problem every year?

AITA?

General backyard maintenance is one thing, but removing invasive blackberry bushes is another problem altogether.

It’s not like they’re asking for help mowing the lawn or pulling weeds – this is a huge issue. If it’s going to cost thousands of dollars to fix, it’s not something that falls under ‘yard maintenance’.

But what does fall under ‘yard maintenance’ is trimming bushes, which they clearly haven’t done, and now it is a big issue for both them and the landlord.

Honestly, the landlord is probably just hoping they’ll pay for it so he doesn’t have to.

Let’s see what folks on Reddit thought about this.

This person agreed that the huge issue is now the landlord’s problem, but could have been prevented by the tenants.

While others questioned their lack of proactivity in maintaining the bushes.

Some Redditors thought that the only issue here was their neglect of the bushes.

While others thought that really, everyone was in the wrong here.

It’s understandable that they’re frustrated if they didn’t know how quickly brambles grow, but all they really needed to do was keep trimming them back.

However the issue now is the invasive problem they’re causing – and even though they didn’t trim them, that’s absolutely the landlord’s responsibility.

It’s his property that they’re devaluing and potentially endangering, after all, and that’s not something they should be paying for.

It’s an annoying problem, but it’s his problem.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.