England’s Upper Tribunal (Lands Chamber) ruled last week on a years-long dispute between neighbours in Surrey.

Elizabeth Dobson and Andrew Pleming had kept the disputed land as a flower bed, before new neighbours Alison and Darren Unsted moved in, removed the plants and replaced them with a garden gnome.

The First-tier Tribunal sided with the Unsteds, finding that the other couple had not used the land for long enough to support a claimof adverse possession.

Ms Dobson and Mr Pleming appealed to the Upper Tribunal (Lands Chamber), which handed down its ruling on Monday 2 March.

Judge Elizabeth Cooke said that it “seems to me perfectly obvious that the appellants were in possession of the disputed land, and that their acts of possession taken together demonstrated their intention to possess it”.

“The judge failed to put side-by-side all the separate activities and see the whole picture, and in my judgment came to the wrong conclusion,” she said.