My immediate next door neighbour is an obsessive gardener whose first act on moving in was to destroy a pretty, well-established garden by removing every single plant, tree and lawn and replace them with succulents and gravel, very noisy. Her choice, but she also removed the borders and her surrounding neighbours' privacy.
My next-door neighbour, a retired army officer, did exactly the same. It is heart-breaking. A whole beautiful garden of roses, peonies, poppies, daisies, established trees and shrubs and a 150-year-old climbing jasmine razed to the ground. Luckily the Council refused permission for him to fell an established oak and an ancient beech, but he put in a bright orange resin surface (rather than gravel): it looks like an
army parade-ground. All the neighbours are frantically growing shrubs for privacy, as he sits there ‘surveying’ what everyone’s doing.