12/07/2025
Father in law just massacred my shrub garden
I purchased a house last year and one of the things I loved about it was it had this cute shrub garden in the small front yard. There was a variety of shrubs including several dwarf mountain pine, a dwarf Japanese maple and another pine tree that was about 8 feet tall in the shape of a Christmas tree.
Last year my wife and I decorated this tree for Christmas which is always something I wanted when I owned a home (outdoor living Christmas tree).
My in laws have been staying with my wife and I for the past few months after the birth of our daughter. Today, completely unprompted and without asking me, my father in law decided to "prune" almost all of the trees in my shrub garden.
This pruning included removing 80% of the foliage from the dwarf mountain pine near the mailbox, removing all the boughs from the Christmas tree-like one except for the top three feet or so, and completely killing the Japanese maple towards the right in the photo. He also pruned almost all the other shrubs, including creating a "hole" in one, but the three I mentioned are most distressing.
When I saw this I was incensed. I am normally a calm person but this is enraging. The only explanation he could give for doing this is he thought they would grow back. At first he said he just wanted to clip a couple branches in the way, but went too far...
It seems to me that restoring my garden to the way it was will be next to impossible as I think many of these shrubs are decades old (a google street view photo of the garden from 13 years ago showed it looking much like it did yesterday before the massacre; it is obvious the shrubs have been here a long time).
I think this post was mostly to just get this off my chest as it happened this morning and I am still fuming about it after 2AM here. However, does anyone have recommendations for what I can plant, especially to replace the Christmas-tree like pine? I am in zone 7A.
