I've just noticed yet another shrub dying in our back garden.
It's was a two metre grevillia with nice yellow flowers that was planted about eight years ago near the back fence, to sceen us from the back neighbours. We've lost several other plants as well, over the last ten years - and all of them were near the back fence, which I don't think is a coincidence.
We moved here in 1984 and a few years after that, our neighbour over the back boasted to us about how he had poisoned several of his neighbour's large cypress trees.
We had a beautiful silky oak tree not far from the back fence, planted by the previous owners. The back neighbours made some comments about it but took advantage of it's size to grow their choko vines up it. Around 2000 it started to wilt. We called an arborist who trimmed it and advised us how to fertilise it. We followed the instructions but the tree died a year later and the arborist came to remove it, while Joan and I were at work. When we arrived home, the arborist advised us four things. (1) the woman over the back couldn't wait to express her extreme delight to him about it being removed; (2) he described her as "mad as a meat axe"; (3) he had established that the tree had been poisoned; and (4) he was obliged to send a report about the poisoning to the local council.
It cost us about $1,500, first to try and rescue the tree and then finally to have it removed. It was poisoned. We did not poison it. The tree only backed on to one neighbour - the one who had boasted of poisoning another neighbour's trees. Now what am I supposed to deduce from that?
Nothing came of the arborist's report to council, possibly because the neighbour is a well-known identity.
Now another screen shrub is dying and I have my suspicions about it.