Many people count their gardens as their pride and joy, and spend years cultivating their own private oasis.
It might be no surprise then that one homeowner was devastated to learn ivy she had spent around 20 years cultivating had been ripped out by her next-door neighbour's family.
Equally troubled was the neighbour, who has admitted her mistake and tried to make amends.
Now, she has taken to Mumsnet desperate for advice after the embarrassing mishap.
Sharing her mortification from her account Barbiepink, the woman explained how everything started off innocently. Needing to trim weeds growing in her back garden, she enlisted the help of her dad.
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Happy to lend a hand, he volunteered to pop over while she was out at work. So her dad set to work, sent a text when he was finished, and the woman didn't think anything of it.
But when she returned home and went out into her garden, she was approached by her next-door neighbours.
The couple claimed her dad had "cut ivy from their side of the fence as well and he’d pulled it out by the roots."
She was then told the wife had spent the whole afternoon crying at the loss of the ivy, having "spent 20 years growing it in the way she wanted it to be."
The sorry neighbour claims she apologised, admitting the fault. She explained she only meant to have "the weeds pulled out and the ivy trimmed back as it was starting to grow up through the paving slabs," but must not have told her dad correctly.
But it did little to calm the couple. "They were very upset and on the warpath," she wrote.
And it sounds like the mistake might continue to be a thorn in her side for some time.
Her post continued: "I went out and bought her some flowers to say sorry and she nearly didn’t accept them, then did, even though she said she was still so upset she couldn’t talk about it."
She concluded that she was unsure what to do next, still feeling "uneasy" from the confrontation".
Many Mumsnet users were left feeling equally unsure, with several comments on the post unable to agree who was in the wrong.
One person said: "Your neighbours a bit dramatic to spend the whole afternoon crying over ivy."
Another disagreed, suggesting "nobody is being unreasonable as such" but that it would be "unreasonable to expect your neighbour to immediately be fine".
And a third wrote: "Obviously (and legally) your neighbours are in the right about this. That said, you've apologized so there's little else you can do."
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