Couple win legal battle after neighbours used gnome to claim strip of lawn | UK | News
New neighbors tried to take over their lawn with a garden gnome (Image: Getty)
A couple have won a legal battle after a neighbor wanted to claim a small patch of grass outside their home and placed a garden gnome on the lawn. Elizabeth Dobson, an expert gardener, and her partner Andrew Pleming have spent years tending the eight-foot patch outside their home in Pointers Hill, Westcott, near Dorking, Surrey.
The court heard the couple mowed it, harrowed it, planted a variety of herbs and wildflowers and even let their children run around in it as part of their garden. But the family’s routine was disrupted when new neighbors Alison Unsted and Darren Unsted moved in next door in 2022 and decided the small space was theirs.
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Nine months later, the couple ripped out the grown plants and started a garden gnome. The move was followed by a legal dispute that reached the Upper Tribunal in London over a small area of grass between the two houses. Mirror.
At the heart of the case was a legal principle known as adverse possession or ‘squatter’s rights’, which allows a person to claim land that they have used as their own for long enough.
Ms Dobson and Mr Pleming argued that the previous owners of their home had considered the patch of grass as part of their garden for years. They also shared that they mow and maintain the lawn like the rest of the lawn, scarifying the soil, replacing the topsoil, and adding herbs and wildflowers.
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Not only that, his children also played there and the lane was a way to push the lawnmower or wheelbarrow between levels of the garden, the court heard. The couple even placed a sign with their house number in the ground.
Their claims were supported by several former tenants of the neighboring house who told the court they had always assumed the patch belonged to number 29 and had never maintained it themselves.
The case was first heard by the First-tier Tribunal, which ruled that the couple only clearly acquired the land around 2018 and converted it into a flower bed, meaning they had not completed the required ten years. But the gardeners remained determined and therefore filed an objection.
This week Judge Elizabeth Cooke overturned the previous ruling in the Upper Tribunal at the Royal Courts of Justice, ruling that the couple had in fact shown years of clear ownership.
“In outline, since the appellants purchased the property they have mowed, raked and scarified the lawn, replaced the topsoil and sod, allowed their children to play on the lawn, used the lawnmower and wheelbarrow to take it to the lower terrace, put up a sign on it and added herbs to the lawn,” the judge said.
Looking at the nature of the small, open-plan lawn, he said there was little an owner could realistically do to demonstrate control of the land. “People generally don’t mow their neighbors’ lawns without their consent,” he added.
“Nor do they allow their children to play on it. They do not alter the topsoil on it or plant in it. Taken together, it seems to me that it is entirely clear that the appellants are in possession of the disputed land.”
The judge concluded that the couple and their predecessors had owned the strip since at least 2002, well before the Unsteds came along and attempted to ‘take it back’ with a dwarf.
He directed that the couple’s application to register the land proceed as if the neighbour’s objection had never been made.
