Gardens require a lot of time and effort, so it's always a bummer when they're damaged.
While most gardens fail due to insufficient soil, sunlight, or water, one Redditor showed that disagreements with neighbors and homeowner associations can also interfere with your garden plans.
The Redditor shared their recent experience with a particularly disagreeable neighbor who intentionally destroyed their garden.
"While I was on a weekend vacation, my neighbor came over and took a weedeater to my (very obvious) flower bed," they wrote. "Came through my front gate and everything."
"He's complained about the bed by the fence between our yard before, because it sometimes reaches through when I'm behind on the pruning," the original poster explained in a comment. "BUT we installed the fence one and a half feet away from the property line on our side, so it's still not in his yard."
Destroying someone's garden isn't just unneighborly — it's also damaging to the environment. Gardening enriches the soil, cleans the air, and provides food and shelter to local wildlife and pollinators. Destroying a garden means you're ruining someone's hard work in addition to ruining precious environmental resources.
The original poster asked if they could do anything about their neighbor's behavior. "Are there any repercussions for this?" they wrote.
Commenters were quick to advise.
"It's trespassing and destruction of property (assuming you have proof it was them, like a video)," one wrote. "So yes, you can press charges for it."
This strategy seemed to have worked for others in the past.
"Dealt with a neighbor who crossed the fence & cut down our tree. He later tried to drill holes into the stump to destroy the evidence," one person wrote. "We sued his ass and he hasn't crossed the property line again."
"That's trespassing and property damage," read one comment. "Make a police report, and report it to the HOA if you have one. Set up cameras if you don't already have them in place to prove it, and plant more flowers. Bigger ones. The most obnoxious ones you can find."
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