Need some advice, and apologies for long post, but details needed.
We bought our house a few years ago and have been making garden improvements including walkway, new patio, landscaping and new, modern shed. Neighbors on both sides say how lovely each improvement is, how nice to have someone take care of old house, etc. DH and I are avid gardeners (even written up in local garden articles).
We have two teen DDs, younger DD sometimes plays with neighbor kids to the left of us. This family has six children under age 11 and have their own garden fence. To the right of us are two homes who share a fence (not w/ us). Neighbor kids from both sides run through our yard to play and sometimes have trampled our plants. While we politely remind them to be careful, I don't expect little ones to always remember (I'm not angry w/ children being children!).We have a lot of rabbits in our area and they've destroyed a number of our beloved plants (even ate the rose bushes). Essentially, we are the only house w/out a fence around our garden, sooo...we planned a garden fence of roughly 1.5 m that would contain our garden, and also form a natural boundary so kids won't run through. We have an open front garden (and front walkway) that kids can still use to get from one house to the next, so we aren't cutting anyone off from visiting friends.
We own the drive that separates us from our neighbors to the left, and their home is a bit lower in elevation than ours. We told everyone over a year ago when landscapers would come in the spring to build the fence. They came Monday to start building and it looks lovely.
Yesterday, our neighbor mom of the six kids came crying (literally) to me that she's devastated about this fence because her kids love our yard so much and they love running through it and as we are higher elevation, our fence makes it impossible to watch her kids from her lower yard. She is 'shocked' she wasn't consulted about the design. Her DH called my DH to demand we take it down.
DH and I refused. We know we are within our rights by law to this fence. Everyone ELSE already has a garden fence. We aren't responsible for accommodating her parenting needs. We desire more privacy, rabbit-free garden and a boundary to keep kids from plants. Should we give in to demands to keep the peace? She's obviously distressed, but her DH has been a jerk in the past, so we fear this is clouding our position to stay firm.