She destroyed my property because she thought she owned the neighborhood. She didn’t realize she had been gardening on my land for twenty years.
I bought my house specifically for the backyard. It was surrounded by a dense, 10-foot-tall laurel hedge that blocked out the world. My neighbor, Mrs. Gable, hated it. She is the self-appointed “Queen of the Neighborhood,” a woman who measures grass height with a ruler and runs the local Garden Club with an iron fist.
“It blocks the afternoon sun from my patio,” she complained the week I moved in. “I like the privacy,” I replied.
The Violation
Three months ago, I came home from work to the sound of chainsaws. I ran to the backyard. My beautiful, mature hedge was gone. Stumps were all that remained. Mrs. Gable was standing there, directing a tree service crew.
“What did you do?!” I shouted. She smiled condescendingly. “Oh, hello dear. I did us both a favor. It opens up the space so much! Now we can chat over the fence.” “That was my hedge,” I said, shaking. “Actually,” she sniffed, “it was on the property line. Which makes it shared. And I voted to remove it.”
She walked away, pleased with herself. My yard was now completely exposed to the street and, worse, to her.
The Survey
I didn’t sue her immediately. I went to the county records office. The maps looked… interesting. I hired a professional surveyor. “I want every inch marked,” I told him. “especially the border with Mrs. Gable.”
He came out two days later with his tripods and lasers. He placed the neon orange stakes in the ground. He looked at me, then at Mrs. Gable’s yard, then back at his papers. “You’re going to like this,” he grinned.
The hedge wasn’t on the property line. It was two feet inside my property. She had committed felony destruction of property. But that wasn’t the best part. The true property line extended three feet further into what Mrs. Gable thought was her yard. Directly inside that three-foot strip was her pride and joy: The Rose Garden. These weren’t just any roses. These were award-winning, hybrid teas that she spent hours pruning every day.
The Setup
I could have told her immediately. But I knew that the annual Garden Club Tour was happening in two weeks. It was the highlight of Mrs. Gable’s life. Dozens of judgmental ladies would be walking through her yard to admire her roses.
I waited. I let her weed them. I let her fertilize them. I let her mulch them to perfection. Then, on the Friday morning before the Saturday tour, I rented a Bobcat skid-steer loader.
The Execution
At 8:00 AM, I fired up the engine. Mrs. Gable came running out in her bathrobe, coffee cup flying. “What is that noise? Stop it!”
I drove the Bobcat right up to the orange surveyor stakes. “Good morning, Mrs. Gable,” I yelled over the engine. “I’m just doing some landscaping on my property. Clearing out some weeds.”
“What are you talking about?”
“This,” I pointed to the stakes. “This is the property line. According to the surveyor, everything on this side is mine.” I dropped the bucket blade. “And I’ve decided I want a flat lawn.”
The Destruction
“No! My roses!” she shrieked. She tried to stand in front of them. “I wouldn’t do that,” I said. “I’m calling the police to report a trespasser.”
The police arrived ten minutes later. Mrs. Gable was hysterical, claiming I was destroying her property. I calmly handed the officer the certified survey map. He looked at the stakes. He looked at the map. “Ma’am,” the officer said. “These plants are on his land. He can do whatever he wants with them.”
As she sobbed into her bathrobe, I proceeded to scrape the entire rose bed down to bare earth. I piled the mangled bushes in a heap on her side of the line (since they were technically her personal property, I was just “returning” them).
The Aftermath
The Garden Club tour the next day was a disaster for her. Instead of a lush wall of roses, the guests saw a patch of raw dirt and a very angry man (me) drinking a beer on a lawn chair.
She received a fine for the destruction of my hedge (valued at $4,000 for mature plant replacement). I used that money to build a 6-foot solid vinyl fence—right on the new property line. It’s stark white, ugly, and blocks her sun completely. She got her view, alright. A view of white plastic and regret.
