Green-fingered Surrey couple win court fight over lawn after neighbour installed garden gnome
A gardening couple have won a legal battle over a 2.5m lawn outside their £1.3 million Surrey home; The argument flared when the new neighbors ripped out their plants and installed a garden gnome.
Liz Dobson, an expert gardener, and her partner Andrew Pleming, both 60, have long tended the small parcel of land at the end of their Dorking driveway, mowing it and planting wildflowers.
Their long-term care was challenged when the company’s chief executive Alison Unsted, 47, and her husband Darren, 54, moved into the £1 million house next door. The Unsteds cleared out an eight-by-one-metre strip of the couple’s plants, replacing them with a garden gnome.
The dispute went to court, where Ms Dobson and Mr Pleming claimed adverse possession – “squatter rights” – due to years of use.
Despite the first court loss, the pair secured victory. Judge Elizabeth Cooke at the Superior Court upheld their objection, confirming continuous use and possession for more than a decade.
Sentencing, Judge Cooke said the couple had done everything they could over the years to show they owned the land, mowing the land, planting herbs and at one point even placing a sign in the ground with their door number.
“People generally do not mow their neighbors’ lawns without their consent,” the judge said.
“They don’t let their kids play on it either. They don’t change the soil on top of it or plant in it,” he added, ruling that Mr. and Mrs. Unsted’s bid to “recapture” the strip with their dwarves had failed.
The Upper Tribunal in London heard that the patch of garden was located at the end of two neighboring driveways, on Ms Dobson’s and Mr Pleming’s side, but was registered under the title deed to the Unsted home.
But Ms Dobson and Mr Pleming said they had always used the triangular site as their own when they bought their house next door in Pointers Hill, Dorking, in 2009.
They used this as a route from the upper lawn to the lower grass, their children using it to get to and from the rope swing; While Mr. Pleming and Ms. Dobson, who the judge said were “very knowledgeable” about plants and soil types, mowed the lawn, amended the topsoil and planted seeds.
But the seeds of neighborly conflict were sown soon after new neighbors Alison and Darren Unsted moved into the £1 million three-bedroom detached house next door in August 2022.
Judge Cooke said that nine months after moving in, the Unsteds began asserting their rights to the small parcel of grass “on 9 May 2023, when the appellants repossessed the disputed land by uprooting their plants and installing a garden gnome”.
Ms Dobson and Mr Pleming, who initially took their neighbors to the First-tier Tribunal, did not dispute that the lane was retained in their neighbours’ ownership.
But they and their home’s previous owners claimed it was theirs under the law of “bad possession” because they had used and enjoyed the strip for decades without objection from their neighbours.
Mr Pleming testified that the couple used the disputed land just like the rest of their garden and front drive, using it as a path for lawnmowers and wheelbarrows, putting house number signs on it and adding plants such as peas and lupines to enrich the soil from 2010 and planting clover from 2012.
The First-tier Tribunal judge found the couple had owned the property since 2018, but this was not long enough to qualify for permanent rights.
He noted that although two avid gardeners had mowed and cultivated the field, he was not convinced they planted grasses such as clover in 2011 or 2013 and that this would help prove their permanent status.
He ordered the registrar to “cancel the couple’s application for registration as owners of the smallholding” and encouraged them to appeal to Judge Cooke in the Superior Court.
Allowing the appeal this week, Judge Cooke said the evidence showed Ms Dobson and Mr Pleming had dealt with the small lot extensively since moving in.
“The full picture is that since the appellants bought the property they have mowed, raked and scarified the lawn, replaced the topsoil and sod where necessary, allowed their children to play on the lawn, used the lawnmower and wheelbarrow to take it to the lower terrace, put a sign on it and added herbs to the lawn,” he said.
“Looking again at the nature of the land, I cannot see what more an invasive owner could do.”
Backing their case, the previous owner of the Unsted home told the court he didn’t even know there was a piece of land there.
He had always treated everything on the other side of the road as if it belonged to Mrs. Dobson and Mr. Pleming.
“Taken together, it seems abundantly clear to me that Ms Dobson and Mr Pleming were in possession of the land in dispute and that their acts of possession, taken together, revealed their intention to possess that land.
“I modify the court’s holding that the appellants have shown that they and their predecessors were in adverse possession since at least 2002 until the respondents dispossessed them in 2023.
“I will therefore direct the registrar to respond to the registration applications as if the defendants had not objected.”
