The Garden Wall 

by Lorraine Hanlon Comanor

          “We’re going to get along famously,” said my new neighbor, a realtor in his early seventies, as he bent over to admire one of my planters. “Both of us having green thumbs. But this garden isn’t up to our standards.” 

            He was referring to a ten-foot-wide strip between our two houses of red sage, polygala, hydrangeas, and marguerites that extended some seventy feet back from the street. The bird-and-butterfly-friendly plot, which my former neighbors and I had congenially maintained, was shaded by two ornamental pears and a holly tree. Like all gardens in our public urban development, it belonged to the Homeowners Association (HOA); and any significant modification required both the agreement of neighbors and the approval of the landscape committee. 

         “It needs sprucing up and gardening is my therapy,” he continued, as we pulled weeds and discussed small plants that might add color. I introduced him and his wife to local nurseries, unaware of their bigger plans. 

          “No worries,” the landscape committee told me, as they described the neighbors’ proposed hopseed hedge dividing the garden between our houses. “You have a say in any changes.”

            Hopseeds may grow to fifteen feet and, planted closely in a row, will fuse into a solid barrier. Something there is that doesn’t love a wall begins a favorite Robert Frost poem. Words I’d remembered, as I witnessed the completion of the Berlin Wall.  

            “You might want to spend a winter here before making any decisions,” I suggested to the new folks, eager not to come off as confrontational, rather as a good neighbor, all the while hoping I might change their minds without having to say Before I built a wall I’d ask to know what I was walling in or walling out. “Sandwiched between our two houses, our north-facing garden gets dark.”

             “We won’t allow a wall,” the landscape committee privately reassured me.

             “Whatever made you think we wanted a wall?” the husband asked on learning I’d voiced concerns to the committee.

               I shrugged without sharing that in June of 1961, two months before barbed wire appeared overnight dividing Berlin, Walter Ulbricht, leader of the East German Communist Party, stated at an international press conference: “We have no intention of building a wall.” 

            Ultimately,  the landscape committee permitted the neighbors three, well-spaced hopseeds, that only at the time of their planting, would I discover, required the removal of the hydrangeas and marguerites. But relieved there would be no wall, I didn’t object.  

         Some months later, members of the old committee retired and a new committee, which my neighbor’s wife joined, formed. Their initial action was to fell the diseased pine that screened our two decks. Declining my suggested Australian evergreen replacement—we already had too much vegetation—they allowed instead two hopseeds. Overnight, another six hopseeds spontaneously appeared, continuing a line with the three originally permitted ones.  But not wanting to disturb relations, I kept mum.

            The unapproved additional hopseeds walled in from east to west the garden’s crown jewel, a ten-foot holly tree, preferred as a perch over the flimsy hopseeds by all manner of birds: hummers, jays, orioles, bushtits, woodpeckers, and an occasional flock of cedar waxwings. Shortly after moving in, the husband had commented on the shine of its leaves and the vibrance of its blood red berries. However, his wife, of the man-versus-tree school, was bothered by a long branch and had pruned it. That incident aside, until the day that one of the ornamental pears fell victim to the drought, toppling over and lopping off one of the holly’s lower branches, the tree had never been an issue. 

         “Now that that branch is gone, it’s time to get rid of that ugly holly,” the wife said, when we were working in the garden a week later. A tall Angeleno with a pinched mouth, she sported a boxy, hooded wool coat in seventy-degree weather.

         “The hole will fill in,” I told her.  “No need to eliminate an otherwise beautiful tree.”

           She retreated into her house.

          Several weeks later, I was pulling saplings by my walkway, when the husband approached me. The holly really had to go; his wife didn’t like it. Feeling momentarily brave, I reiterated that a broken branch was no reason to remove a healthy tree. Besides, I silently reasoned, the holly was a foot to my side. When the husband didn’t reply, I thought we were done with the topic.  Certainly, folks who had been cooperating for months on a variety of projects, weren’t going to have a major disagreement about a tree. 

         But one afternoon, some days later, when I was raking leaves, my neighbor emerged from his house, his Birkenstocks flapping against the walkway, asking yet again for the holly’s removal. I tasted bile. Just how many times did one have to say ‘no’?  Since I’d granted all of their previous requests, I didn’t feel compelled in this one instance to change my mind; yet, afraid of saying something I couldn’t retract, I didn’t respond.

         After some moments of silence, my neighbor suggested that perhaps I could keep my holly—emphasizing the “my”—provided it didn’t interfere with the additional hopseed they wanted to plant. I was about to remind him the holly belonged to the HOA, when it dawned on me that the tree was in the way of the denied hedgerow they intended to complete. In order for them to bisect the garden with a straight row of hopseeds, the holly would have to go.

         Before I could remind him of the previous committee’s “no wall” decision, he leaned on his spade and said, “You’ve always gone along with our wishes, so I don’t understand your current obstinance. You’re now interfering with the enjoyment of our property.”

          I’m slow to respond to veiled threats, fearful of permanent consequences of calling people out. As a former HOA VP, I’d been an arbiter of similar disputes, witnessed neighborly relationships deteriorate over trees, and found it embarrassing to be in a similar conflict. Had the holly not lost a branch, would we have continued as good neighbors, or would these folks eventually have found some excuse for its removal? How much would it cost me to let them have their way?  The gall of being badgered to remove a decades-old tree, because his wife didn’t like it, because it interfered with their desired, but denied, wall.  How to respond when someone suggests you pound sand? Frost provided no clues, so I looked for other guidance: the Brothers Grimm.

           In Germany’s Harz Mountains  there is an 85-million-year-old rock formation called  the Devil’s Wall (Teufelsmauer), which, during the Cold War, became part of the Inner German Border.  According to the Brothers Grimm, it was here that the Devil fought with God over the dominion of the earth. Eventually, the Devil was promised his half of the earth—God keeping the fertile plains and He, the ore-rich mountains—if He could complete the dividing wall in one night before the cock’s first crow. He was almost finished, when a girl, en route to market, dropped her cock and he crowed. Believing the night was over and He’d lost the wager, in a fit of pique, the Devil smashed a section of His wall.

         How might the Devil respond to my current dilemma?  Take a scythe to the hopseeds, poison their roots? Neither option was anything that I was up to. The mischief in me imagined instead an elf importing a snake plant that would overrun the neighbors’ newly planted lantana.  

          Savoring my fantasy, I went back inside without answering. But from then on, I watched for when the two left the house, purposely waiting until they were out of sight before venturing out. Cowardly, maybe, but preferable in my mind to an unpleasant argument.

          A week later, I mentioned to another committee member the undue pressure I felt. My sentiments must have been relayed, perhaps also with the message that the holly should remain, because a spate of my neighbors’ emails suggested I was conflict-avoidant and should be ashamed of myself for bothering others with an issue easily resolved by a friendly chat.  

         The neighbors’ next modification request, replacing the fallen ornamental pear with a 25-gallon tree too large to sneak in overnight, required my assent. Eager for it, the husband showed me the proposed location, a comfortable distance from the holly. We were already overrun with trees, given his unauthorized hopseeds, but, as his plan did not include the holly’s removal, I signed off.

            I was working in my office that overlooked the garden, when the planting crew arrived with the new pear. Seeing them start digging a hole at the holly’s base, I rushed downstairs. 

          “That’s not where the tree’s supposed to go,” I said, showing them the approved diagram, without mentioning the three unapproved laburnums they had in tow. The balding husband, who had been watching from his kitchen window, came outside in his shorts.

           “This is not what you showed me and I agreed to,” I told him, venturing to be assertive   in his gangly, six-foot-plus presence.

          “We can put them wherever we want,” he replied, “we paid for them.” He directed the gardeners to plant the laburnum within inches of the holly’s base, and the pear, right next to it. Oh, just another kind of outdoor game/ One on a side. It comes to little more…If he couldn’t remove the hated holly, he might be able to choke it.   

            Angered by his boorish behavior, yet also distraught that a tree could cause ill will between formerly congenial neighbors, I continued to avoid him. He move(d) in darkness, as it seem(ed) to me.  Afraid I might tell him what I thought of his latest stunt, I even hesitated to go to my garage, if he were out gardening. Had I initially called out his bullying, might we have had it out and then moved on, or might we have never spoken again?

              In time, due to no action on my part, we reached a détente—my neighbors resigned themselves to a holly they didn’t want and I, to my favorite tree being walled in. We politely said good morning, but never again gardened together. As spring advanced, the hopseeds began to fill out, making it easier to come and go unnoticed, without my taking my fists out of my pockets.

            A few months later, reorganizing books, I came across my old volume of Frost and reread The Mending Wall, reminded that the poet had given up on changing his neighbor’s positive view of walls—he likes having thought of it so well. About that time, one of the old landscape committee members, who had initially denied the neighbors’ proposed hedge, stopped by my house on another matter. Passing the developing hedgerow, he shook his head. “Looks like a wall to me,” he said. But only when he added, “Wasn’t it the guy next to Robert Frost who said ‘good fences make good neighbors?’ did my wall aversion begin to crumble.

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