Actually, gardenias are tough, tough plants. I don't know why they have the reputation of being hard to grow, I guess because too many people have gotten a small, potted one and then proceeded to torture it by keeping it indoors in hot, dry, dark conditions, and then often overwatering and rotting the roots as it sat in a decorative pot cover -- the typical Valentine's Day/Easter/Mother's Day gift plant thing. They should bounce back with vigor. I would just pot up to a larger, appropriate sized pot, use a really good quality potting mix like ProMix that is peat and perlite based, and keep them watered. They like to get just barely dry between waterings. I assume you're going to keep them outdoors for the summer -- they will be ok in full sun to partial shade, as long as it's not cooking in extreme afternoon heat. I a few weeks as they recover, I would start feeding about every 10 days with a liquid fertilizer for acid-loving plants. Use some Osmocote, too, if they don't have some from the grower already. The two biggest issues you will encounter with gardenias is 1) that they turn chlorotic easily if the soil pH goes too high, that is a problem in areas with hard tap water, use acid plant fertilizers and trace elements to combat this and 2) they are bug magnets, aphids, scale, white fly, and mites love them. I spray a couple times a year with one of the newer class of insecticides/miticides such as Bayer 3 in 1 Insect/Disease/Mite spray. And I always put imadicloprid in the soil spring and fall. That keeps bugs away. The winter best in cool, dryish conditions. They are temperate zone plants and need a dormancy, but they can't tolerate deep freezing to any significant extent, most are zone 8 or zone 9, such as the really common variety 'August Beauty' which is probably what yours are. I winter mine at about 40-50 degrees, let them get quite a bit drier than in summer but don't let them wilt. When I bring them in in the fall, I generally will prune the top back about 50% just for size control, since they grow rapidly in the summer and my space for wintering is small, but that is completely optional.

I believe, from lengthy threads here at GW, and elsewhere on the web, various people have over the years challenged local 'weed ordinances' and they have been successful on, I believe, constitutional grounds. It's their property - they have as much right to grow weeds as you do to cultivate flowers. Did you try and discuss it with them before you 'called the county on them'? Because, if not, then I think it may be too late to rebuild any kind of co-operation: at this point, they may regard you as the 'bad neighbour'. I know, as a gardener, how frustrating it must be, but it's their land. And maybe they WANT to encourage wildlife: plenty of people in my neighbourhood allow parts of their property to grow wild, as both habitat and feeding station for wildlife of all kinds. Rats will not come where there's just weeds: they'll come in if there's trash, or access to other food sources, but weeds and long grass won't do it. Otherwise every meadow would be full of them. If you decide to spray, might I suggest you put a polite note in their mailbox, explaining that you are only spraying along your side of the property line, and are not spraying anything on their side. It could go a long way to avoiding any potential misunderstanding, when clearly things are tense already.

the big thing about "limiting walking aorund' would be that, if you're up after 11, and your bedroom is directly above theirs, go out of the bedroom. Don't pace around the bedroom, or watch the TV in the bedroom if it bleeds through, etc. Don't do your craft project in the bedroom; take it to the dining room after hours. But to not get out of bed to go to the bathroom, or adjust the clock radio, or to not walk gently around the bedroom getting dressed for bed--that's too much. My new downstairs neighbor works a shift that ends late, so he sleeps much later than we do. I walk softly in the morning, and I leave the bedroom quickly. (Of course, I'm just getting dressed, etc., but I make an extr effort to be quiet in the bedroom) Also, maybe what's going on is that you are SO quiet, that when you do make noise, she really notices it. That happened to us. We didn't vaccum for literally months. Like, 4 months. We were just never home, or when we were, we were either eating dinner, or our toddler was sleeping & we didn't want to wake her. Then, when we finally DID vacuum, the guy below went nuts banging on the ceiling. And, we were on the receiving end of that. For years we had an elderly, not particularly mobile woman living above us. Then, she went into the hospital and died. And for about a year, there was NO ONE above us. Then, the sister who inherited put the apt. on the market, and vacuumed 2 or 3 times a week. Wow, was it loud! Of course, we were intelligent enough to realize that the problem was US and our skewed expectations. But I wonder if that's it--you're out a lot, so when you ARE home, it seems really loud to her. As for what your landlord will say to others, well, ask them. If I were them, I'd be hesitant to say something that made it hard for you to get a new apartment--that would be definite grounds for a libel suit. Perhaps they could argue that they're being factual, bcs there ARE noise complaints; but them passing the info on indicates that they've endorsed the complaint, which they haven't.

I don't want people without permission walking onto my home build. It can be dangerous with the building materials all over the place and if someone is hurt on my property, then I'm liable. I was in the house checking a few things on a Saturday back in late April. Up walks a mother and adult daughter and they start poking around in my garage, picking up some of the lumber, looking at everything, etc. I asked them what they were doing and they said they were just looking around. (Looked to me like they were wondering if they could "borrow" a few things from the way they were talking.) I let them know they were trespassing and they tried to explain how they were just looking. So I said to them, "Well I guess I'll take a walk with you back to your home now so I can go poke around and pick up materials in your house too, since you think this is ok." I reiterated that they were on private property and they were not welcome on mine. I have permission from my builder to check out his other builds, but if I ever ran into the homeowner and he/she asked me not to walk around, I'd honor that. As for other builds not by my builder, I would not walk through without permission.