Have you ever complained about something but didn’t really understand the consequences until you got what you thought you wanted?

The saying goes to be careful what you wish for because you just might get it, and that’s what happens in today’s story.

A family has a hedge separating their house from the neighbor’s house, but when the neighbors complain about trimming the hedge, the family takes action in a way the neighbors never expected.

Let’s read the whole story.

Neighbour 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 neighbours since the 90s but we do have a reputation in the neighbourhood of frequently undertaking ambitious DYI home improvements and in an atypical manner to what locals expect.

Our house is separated from the neighbours 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 neighbours and the same cypress trees.

A neighbor complained about the trees.

One day out of the blue, one of the neighbours 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 neighbour 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.

It was actually perfect timing.

Unbeknown to the neighbour, 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 neighbours, but this demand provided the perfect excuse.

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

The neighbors realize there’s another problem.

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

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

The neighbour 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 had another request.

Within a week the neighbours 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.

Well, in the end, the neighbors still get what they want. Nobody has to trim the hedge since there is no more hedge to trim.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This is a good point.

Another person has a similar comment about the fence.

Here’s another comment about the location of the fence.

Living fences don’t always make good neighbors.

If you liked that post, check out this one about an employee that got revenge on HR when they refused to reimburse his travel.