‘Bullying’ gardener must pay £12k to neighbour in apple row

A GARDENING enthusiast has been ordered to pay £12,000 to a neighbour whom she harassed for seven years following a row over her apple tree.

Antoinette Williams was likened to a “school bully” over her actions towards next-door neighbour Barbara Pilcher in Dunsfold, Surrey.

Central London County Court heard Mrs Pilcher sued her neighbour, whom she claimed plagued her by repeatedly staring at her through her windows.

The pair’s dispute began in 2014 after they argued over Mrs Williams’ 40ft Bramley apple tree, which dumped hundreds of rotten fruit into her neighbour’s garden.

Judge Lawrence Cohen QC ruled in favour of Mrs Pilcher, which could see Mrs Williams hit with a costs and damages bill of around £250,000.

He awarded Mrs Pilcher £12,000 for harassment, also ordering Mrs Williams to pay costs estimated at between £135,000 and £180,000 towards her neighbour’s lawyers’ fees, on top of her own legal bills.

The court heard Mrs Williams, a member of the Dunsfold and Hascombe Horticultural Society, moved into her £600,000 cottage in Dunsfold, near Godalming, almost 40 years ago, while Mrs Pilcher bought the adjoining £500,000 cottage in 2010.

In 2014, the women clashed over Mrs Williams’ refusal to cut back her apple tree, which meant fruit fell over the fence on to Mrs Pilcher’s garden.

The subsequent harassment campaign involved a range of incidents, the court heard, including Mrs Williams repeatedly peering in through Mrs Pilcher’s windows, “monitoring” her comings and goings and even following her neighbour’s relatives after they had visited. The allegations were denied by Mrs Williams. But Judge Cohen rejected her claims and said her behaviour was “completely abnormal and disturbing”, adding the conduct “reminds me of bullying behaviour by school children”.

The judge said: “My conclusion about this incident is therefore that Mrs Williams’ conduct can fairly be described as vandalism. It was deliberately aimed at upsetting Mrs Pilcher and I find it fairly characterised as disgraceful.”

He said the seven-year campaign of harassment had had a serious impact on Mrs Pilcher and her family.

“She dreads coming home, her daughter does not want to stay with her anymore and other young family members either do not want to visit her or, if they are brought to visit, need to be sheltered from the offensive conduct.”

‘Mrs Williams’ conduct can be described as vandalism … It was deliberately aimed at upsetting Mrs Pilcher’

An apple tree has been the occasion for an unneighbourly loss of love at Dunsfold in Surrey. By a fearful symmetry, the leafy spot is not far across the fields from the site of the annual outdoor Nativity play at Wintershall. There, it is all peace and goodwill toward men. At Dunsfold it is more like Paradise Lost and the fruit of that forbidden tree, in this case a Bramley apple tree that shed its crop on the next-door lawn, where wasps hurried to the rotting feast. Things went from bad to worse, with an attempted pruning of the overhanging boughs and reports of faces at the window shielded with hands from the reflection so that they could see in. The treeowning loser at Central London County Court is now landed with a bill for £250,000 or so. That would buy an awful lot of apple pies.