Harold had spent twenty years waving politely at his neighbour, Dennis, and nineteen of those years wondering how to stop.
The final straw came when Dennis leaned over the fence at seven on a Sunday morning and offered advice on how Harold should butter his toast.
On Monday, Harold went to the garden centre and asked for the fastest-growing privacy hedge available.
The assistant, Chloe, showed him a row of glossy green plants. “These grow at least six inches in the first month if you water them properly.”
“Guaranteed?”
“Guaranteed.”
Harold bought twelve, planted them along the fence, and measured each one with a yellow tape measure. The tallest was thirty-six inches. He wrote the number on a card and pinned it inside the shed.
For the first week, everything went well. Harold watered morning and evening. Dennis watched from the other side and suggested a different nozzle, a different fertilizer, and a different attitude.
After seven days, Harold measured again.
Thirty-five inches.
He marched back to the garden centre.
“Your guaranteed hedge has shrunk.”
Chloe asked whether he had watered it.
“Twice daily.”
“Sunlight?”
“Plenty.”
“Any sign of pests?”
“Only Dennis.”
She advised him to wait another week.
Harold returned home, spread fresh compost around every plant, watered carefully, and placed small wooden stakes beside them. Dennis leaned over the fence and said the stakes were facing the wrong direction.
A week later, Harold measured again.
Thirty-four inches.
This time he carried one of the plants into the shop in a wheelbarrow.
Chloe inspected the leaves. They were bright, healthy, and covered in new growth.
“It looks excellent,” she said.
“It is disappearing.”
“It has new shoots.”
“So does Dennis. Every morning he appears with another opinion.”
Chloe measured the plant from the base of the stem to the highest leaf. “Thirty-eight inches.”
Harold produced his tape. “Impossible. At home it was thirty-four.”
They compared tape measures. Both were accurate.
Chloe asked him to show her how he measured, so she followed him home. Dennis was waiting at the fence with two mugs of tea and the expression of a man attending a free inspection.
Harold placed the plant back in the soil, pressed the compost around it, and stretched the tape from the ground to the top.
“Thirty-four,” he announced.
Chloe knelt beside the plant. She pushed her fingers through the fresh compost, then kept pushing.
“How much compost have you added?”
“A bag every few days. Good plants need good soil.”
She dug down until she found the original ground level, several inches below the new surface.
Then she measured from there.
“Forty inches,” she said. “Your hedge has grown four inches already.”
Harold looked at the tape, the buried stem, and the mountain of compost.
“Then why does it look shorter?”
“Because your garden is growing faster than your hedge.”
Dennis leaned over the fence. “I was going to mention that.”
Harold turned slowly. “You watched me add all that soil?”
“Every bag.”
“And you said nothing?”
Dennis looked offended. “You never asked about altitude.”
Chloe explained that Harold had raised the soil level so much that he was burying the evidence of the hedge’s growth. At his current rate, the plants would be six feet tall by Christmas and completely underground by Easter.
Harold asked whether the guarantee covered this.
“It guarantees growth,” Chloe said. “It does not guarantee that you’ll notice it.”
Dennis raised his mug. “I noticed.”
Harold stared at him, then at the hedge. Suddenly he smiled.
He ordered another twenty bags of compost and had them delivered along the fence line.
Chloe asked what he planned to do with them.
Harold pointed toward Dennis’s garden.
“If the hedge won’t become tall enough to block him,” he said, “I’ll make my side high enough to look down on him.”
Dennis stopped giving gardening advice that afternoon.
Not because the hedge had grown.
Because Harold’s garden now required a ladder.