‘Nightmare’ neighbour who chopped down hedge to make her flowerbed two ft larger loses newest courtroom battle that is already value her £27,000
A ‘nightmare’ mother who ripped down a shared hedge to make her flowerbed two feet bigger has lost a six-year £27,000 court war with her neighbour.
Tersia Van Zyl and husband Stiaan were taken to court after Peter Walker-Smith accused them of wrongly having the bush that separated their gardens in Claygate, Surrey cut down.
Mr Walker-Smith – who is corporate treasurer for tobacco giant Imperial Brands, the makers of Rizla and Golden Virginia – lives in the bottom floor flat while the married couple live in the flat above.
Each property has a garden at the rear of the house and Mrs Van Zyl, who was ‘excited’ about having a garden in her first family home, cut down the holly hedge separating them so she could alter the structure of her garden.
But Mr Walker-Smith sued the couple in March 2023, taking them to Central London County Court and claiming they had no right to have the hedge torn up as it was not theirs.
Judge Alan Saggerson found in favour of Mr Walker-Smith, saying the Van Zyls had no right to take such a ‘spiteful unilateral action’ in removing the jointly-owned hedge and putting in the new fence where they did.
He ordered the married couple to pay a £27,000 court bill as a result. But the Van Zyls instead fought on at the High Court, continuing their legal war of attrition.
Now top judge Mr Justice Marcus Smith has this week rejected their appeal, leaving the Van Zyls to pay the crushing costs of the case.
Before and after picture of Peter’s garden after the hedge was hacked down by Tersia Van Zyl
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An aerial view of the gardens shows the fence that was put up after the hedge was cut down. Mr Walker-Smith’s garden has the patio furniture
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Tersia Van Zyl was excited about the garden in her first family home
The couple have already been ordered to pay their neighbour £2,200 damages and an initial £25,000 towards his lawyers’ bills, which are estimated at considerably more than that.
The couple had claimed the earlier decision contradicted a lease plan showing the line of the boundary, but Mr Justice Marcus Smith said the existing hedge was also an important aspect which needed to be considered.
‘The judge was perfectly entitled to look to the physical features of the land, specifically the hedge, and there was no reason in law why he could not prefer the evidence of the hedge to the evidence of the…plan,’ he said.
Speaking exclusively to MailOnline after his 2023 victory, Mr Walker-Smith said the final court bill for his ‘nightmare’ neighbours could be as much as £50,000.
He said of the hedge battle: ‘I did not ask for this. We were corresponding through solicitors when they went ahead and cut down the hedge.
‘I had asked them not to cut it down but they went ahead anyway. It is very unfortunate how it has all ended up but they had decided not to wait and just put up the fence.
‘They were asked to remove it, but it did not happen, and we ended up in court.’
During the initial trial in 2023, Judge Saggerson heard Mr Walker-Smith bought his ground floor flat in Albany Crescent, Claygate, in 2014.

Peter Walker-Smith is the corporate treasurer for tobacco giant Imperial Brands, the makers of Rizla and Golden Virginia, sued his neighbours

Mr Walker-Smith lives in the ground floor flat of the Surrey property (pictured) while the married couple live in the flat above
Mr Van Zyl, a quantity surveyor, and his wife moved into the maisonette above the following year, but the relationship between the neighbours broke down completely afterwards.
Each property had a back garden, separated by a holly hedge, the judge was told.
For the Van Zyls, barrister Lina Mattsson said Mrs Van Zyl – a mother and keen gardener – wanted to chop down the hedge in order to make more room for her plants.
From the witness box, Mrs Van Zyl told the judge: ‘I love gardening, I was excited,’ but added: ‘The hedge was consuming more or less a third of my flowerbed that I wanted to use in a different way.’
The barrister said Mr and Mrs Van Zyl obtained a surveyor’s report and were convinced that the hedge separating the two gardens was entirely on their land.
Mr Walker-Smith disagreed, but despite that, the couple in April 2019 engaged contractors to come in and tear up the hedge and replace it with a close-boarded fence.
For Mr Walker-Smith, barrister Jonathan Wills said the couple had ‘unilaterally and outrageously removed the hedge’ and the fence they erected was on Mr Walker-Smith’s side of the boundary, meaning they had effectively land-grabbed part of his garden.

An aerial view of the two gardens – the Van Zyls on the left and Mr Walker-Smith’s on the right – after the fence in the middle was put up

Peter Walker-Smith’s garden before the holly hedge on the right was hacked down

The fence that was put up after the hedge was cut down. Picture shows Mr Walker-Smith’s garden
‘Mr Walker-Smith’s case is that there was a longstanding hedge, which formed the obvious dividing line between the parties’ gardens,’ he continued.
To make matters worse, the fence which the Van Zyls erected was on Mr Walker-Smith’s side of the boundary line, meaning they had effectively land-grabbed part of his garden, Mr Wills said.
Removal of the hedge – said by a gardener to be 700mm wide – and replacement with a fence left Mr Walker-Smith’s garden feeling more ‘confined,’ the barrister argued.
‘This isn’t the biggest land grab in the world, but in a garden that is triangular, it does make a difference,’ he told the judge.
Giving evidence, Mrs Van Zyl said she considered Mr Walker-Smith the ‘neighbour from hell,’ because the row had taken away her ‘enjoyment’ of her home.
‘This was my first property, where I got married, where my children were born,’ she said.
But Mr Wills said that Mrs Van Zyl herself deserved to be dubbed ‘the neighbour from hell’.
‘It might be said that Mr Walker-Smith isn’t the neighbour from hell, but that it is the neighbour who has removed a hedge that was there for very many years,’ he said.
At the end of the trial, Judge Saggerson found that the ‘reasonable layman’ looking at the gardens when the hedge was there would have thought the boundary ran down the middle of it.
It meant the Van Zyls had no right to take such a ‘spiteful unilateral action’ in removing it and putting in the new fence – and would have to move it back to the true boundary.

Another aerial view of the gardens. The bigger with the trampoline belongs to Tersia Van Zyl
But appealing against the decision at the High Court, Ms Mattsson argued that the decision ignored a lease plan which showed the extent of the gardens and even gave some measurements.
‘The key feature of this plan is you do have measurements,’ she told Mr Justice Marcus Smith.
‘The authorities say you should give more weight to the plan than just saying it’s part of a puzzle.
‘The judge said the fact his findings may not precisely correspond with the plan is neither here nor there.
‘But they’re wildly off. There’s no resemblance at all to the measurements. The measurements have just been ignored.’
She also argued that to find the dividing hedge was shared resulted in a ‘rather unorthodox setup.’
‘There’s nothing in the lease at all about how shared ownership would be dealt with,’ she said.
‘There’s nothing extraneous to support that conclusion. It is not an obvious conclusion by any stretch of the imagination.’
But Mr Wills said the plan could not be relied on for precise locations as it was only ever intended to ‘identify’ the land, not ‘define’ it.
The hedge – which the judge found had been there since at least 1981 – had to be used along with real features on the ground when determining where the true boundary lies, he argued.
Giving judgment and rejecting the Van Zyls’ appeal, Mr Justice Marcus Smith backed the way that Judge Saggerson had considered the case.
He said the judge had found it ‘transparently obvious’ that the plan was ‘only for the purposes of identification’ and so was not determinative of the boundary.
‘The plan is not to scale,’ he said. ‘It is also exceedingly small and hard to read. The demarcations and edgings are – particularly given the size of the plan – disproportionately thick.
‘The judge did not hold that the plan should be disregarded. To the contrary, he took it into account. He correctly approached the question of construction before him.
‘He did not commit the error of seeking to construe the plan as if it more particularly delineated the boundary.
‘He construed the evidence before him as a whole and reached the correct conclusion.’