The new neighbours tried to claim the grass patch with a garden gnome (Image: Getty)
A couple have won a legal battle over a tiny strip of lawn outside their home after a neighbour tried to claim it by placing a garden gnome on the grass. Elizabeth Dobson, an expert gardener, and her partner, Andrew Pleming, had spent years looking after the eight-by-three-foot area outside their home on Pointers Hill in Westcott, near Dorking, Surrey.
The pair mowed it, raked it, planted various herbs and wildflowers, and even let their children run across it as part of their garden, a tribunal heard. However, the family’s routine was interrupted when new neighbours Alison Unsted and Darren Unsted moved in next door in 2022, and decided that the small patch belonged to them.
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Nine months later, the couple removed the plants that were grown and set up a garden gnome. The move was followed by a legal dispute over the small area of grass between the two homes, which reached the Upper Tribunal in London, reports the Mirror.
At the heart of the case was a legal principle known as adverse possession, or ‘squatters’ rights’, which allows someone to claim land if they have used it as their own for long enough.
Ms Dobson and Mr Pleming argued that the previous owners of their home had treated the patch of grass as part of their garden for years. They also shared that they had mowed and maintained the grass just like the rest of their lawn, scarified the soil, replaced topsoil and introduced herbs and wildflowers.
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Not only that, but their children played on it, and the strip was a route to push a mower or wheelbarrow between levels of their garden, the tribunal heard. The couple even embedded a sign with their house number in the soil.
Their claim was backed up by several former tenants of the neighbouring home, who told the tribunal 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 the couple had only clearly taken possession of the land from around 2018 when they turned it into a flower bed, falling short of the ten years required. But the gardeners remained determined and therefore appealed.
This week, Judge Elizabeth Cooke overturned the earlier decision at the Upper Tribunal, which sits at the Royal Courts of Justice, and she ruled the couple had, in fact, demonstrated years of clear possession.
“The full picture is that, since the appellants bought the property, they have mowed, raked and scarified the lawn, replaced topsoil and turf, let their children play on the grass, used it to take the mower and barrow to the lower terrace, put a sign on it, and introduced herbs into the grass,” the judge said.
Looking at the nature of the small open-plan lawn, she said there was little more an owner could realistically do to show control of the land. “People do not generally mow their neighbour’s grass without their agreement,” she added.
“Nor do they let their children play on it. Nor do they replace topsoil on it or plant herbs in it. Taken together it seems to me perfectly obvious that the appellants were in possession of the disputed land.”
The judge concluded the couple and their predecessors had owned of the strip since at least 2002, long before the Unsteds arrived and attempted to ‘repossess’ it with a gnome.
She ordered that the couple’s application to register the land should now proceed as if the neighbour’s objection had never been made.
