Leyland is a town in Lancashire near Preston which has given its name to many makes of lorry and bus. It is also the surname of the landowner [C.J. Leyland, born 18881 on whose estate there was discovered the natural hybrid of two trees, one of Alaskan, one of Californian origin, to form Britain’s fastest-growing tree, the now notorious leylandii. which will grow to a height of almost 100ft.

Leviandii were unheard of until the 1960s when it was realised they could provide a thick, quick-growing. sound-insulating curtain for railway lines and new motorways. People then saw that they could serve the same effect for their gardens and homes, effectively blocking out the neighbours with an impenetrable mask of evergreen.

Such was the origin of innumerable leylandli wars, with aggrieved neighbours suing for loss of light, undermining of foundations by roots, and a sense of being imprisoned by the ‘folk next door’. All of these things arose because the trees were not subject to their necessary thrice-annual trimming. A Japanese ex-Buddhist monk has developed a way of trimming the trees so that they have tall, bare trunks with round, bushy, tops (sort of like arboreal poodles’ tails) but that has yet to catch on.

Leylandli rows came top in the league of violent neighbourly disputes, well ahead of:

· people singing ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ to upset German neighbours on the 50th anniversary of VE-Day

· ‘rose rage’ caused by innocent petals from next door falling onto a neighbour’s path

· boundary fence disputes including flooding a village with posters branding one party a liar and conman and threatening to exhume deceased members of the family

· attempts to close a pub kitchen in Norfolk by a new neighbour complaining of food smells

· assassination of koi fish, and wreckage of ornamental ponds with a tribal spear

· repeated vandalism of a Range Rover and Porsche by a jealous Fulham barrister.

Ironically, leylandli are hybrids of two variants of ... the cypress tree, the tree which, in Old Testament imagery, stands alongside the cedar as a symbol of grace. fruitfulness and peace.