Gardener banned from his own backyard for digging up neighbor's plants
It’s a 21st century War of the Roses.
A vindictive green thumb has been banned from his own backyard garden – for digging up his downstairs neighbors’ award-winning plot.
A British court last week ruled in favor of Jasmine McMurdo, whose neighbor Michael Oram has been terrorizing her — and her plants– for years at their home in Twickenham, according to the London Evening Standard.
Oram has ripped up bamboo and lavender plants and ruined the grass in their shared backyard garden – which both neighbors have claimed to maintain.
“Every time I plant something it’s ripped up. This is not a vendetta. This is me standing up to a bully,” McMurdo told the newspaper. “He dresses and talks nicely and he’s well-educated. He plays the system. He has made our lives hell.”
The pristine garden won a silver prize last year in Richmond’s Borough in Bloom contest — and the award was collected by McMurdo.
But Oram claims he’s been tending the garden, located at luxury apartment complex The Barons in Greater London, for years.
“When I moved in it was a jungle of brambles, an utter mess,” he said. “I’ve been tending this garden since 2006 when it was an utter wreck. Through blood, sweat and tears and my own cost and energy I have brought it back to the garden we have today.”
The 73-year-old – who was allegedly caught on camera last September pulling up McMurdo’s plants – claimed he was simply “removing dead foliage and weeds.”
“Ms McMurdo doesn’t know anything about plants whatsoever,” he said. “They were planted by a previous tenant who cared for that garden. These gardens are kept by me. I spend all my disposable income on it. I do love the gardens.”
The neighbors’ squabble was heard in Wimbledon magistrate’s court, where McMurdo, 55, accused Oram of going so far as to drill holes in his floor so that water would flood her basement apartment.
Oram was convicted of harassing his neighbor. He was given a six-week prison sentence that’s suspended for a year and ordered to pay nearly $2,000 in compensation and so she can fix her floor.
He was also blocked from going into his backyard for two years and ordered to fork over about $660 in court fees.
Oram, who’s also won a silver award for his green thumb, blasted the court ruling as trying to “extinguish the basic right of an Englishman to be in his garden.”