Andi, you have no idea. This past spring our former next door neighbors stopped by for dinner, and told us the new owner had used an axe (of all things!) to chop down the rhododendruns that used to border the descending steps in my back garden (shown here in a picture I took a few years ago). I couldn't help myself, and drove by our former home the next day to see how things looked. Sure enough, there were the rhodies, all chopped up and piled on the curb. I felt so incredibly bad - like I abandoned them, and was responsible for their fate. But who could have guessed he wanted to remove these, of all things? He has zero interest in plants of any kind, so I can't imagine he wants to put anything in their place.
This past winter we had occasion to visit our neighbors and saw that he had actually parked his giant pick-up truck ON TOP of a pair of boxwoods alongside the driveway. The driveway is only one car width wide, and apparently he wanted enough space to get his other car past it, to get it in and out of the garage. So he just decided to run over the plants. It was the most incredible thing I had ever seen. I thought back on when I actually planted those specimens, how I fed and watered them over the years, and took pains to prune and shape them.
Last November when he told us he was going to dig up the gardens, he said, and I quote word for word, "Me and flowers don't get along."
Now I see why!
