Evicted tenant takes entire garden with her – leaving landlord furious

A woman who was evicted from her house has revealed how she left her landlord "furious" after taking the garden she cultivated with her when she left.

The then-25-year-old took to Reddit's "Am I the A**hole" forum in a 2019 thread which has recently resurfaced, to question whether or not she was the a**hole for upsetting her landlord for moving her garden and provided some further context to the situation.

She had been renting and living at the house for seven years since she was 18, and when she initially moved in the backyard was "a large piece of dirt, no lawn or anything, just a decently big backyard with a fence all around".

"It was a cheap but not great house, but I signed because I wanted the backyard space," the poster explained and described the garden she made out of the space.

"Over the past few years, I erected a small garden shed, greenhouse and pizza oven (transportables), planted lots of veggie gardens in big transportable garden beds, and put down some nice pavers, an aquaponics set up, and generally made the backyard a really green and beautiful place to be. It became the green oasis all my friends gathered at."

Then, the landlord informed her a few months ago that they were planning to sell the property and the poster noted that her move-out day was a week ago, and so she packed everything up - including her garden.

iStockphoto by Getty Images

"When I left, I brought my garden with me to my new place - nothing in my last backyard was directly placed into the ground, and nothing permanent. I dismantled the sheds and greenhouse, loaded up all the pots and garden beds onto a truck and cleared the backyard in three days with lots of help."

But this didn't exactly go down too well with her landlord...

"My former landlords are furious over this, and demand that I return the backyard to the former state - apparently they’d listed the house for sale with pictures of the backyard and potential buyers were walking away from the house when they saw the barren backyard. They’re accusing me of stealing their plants, and wrecking the backyard," she detailed.

However, she did note that she's "legally fine" as her contract stated she could garden and she also has photos of the backyard before she moved in to prove it is in the same state as she first found it, plus she was able to get her deposit and final inspection signed off by the same estate agent.

Despite all these points, the woman says she's received "mixed responses" from people on the situation as she noted how she saw the landlord taking photos of the backyard but "didn’t make the connection because imho [in my humble opinion] when pictures of a house has furniture in it, you don’t expect to also get free furniture."

"Some of my coworkers suggested that IATA because the house valuation certainly has fallen dramatically because I didn’t tell them I was taking my garden with me, so they couldn’t plan to landscape before lockdown hit."

To conclude, the woman asked the subreddit: "AITA for moving my garden that I built from my former rental house into my new house, upsetting my former landlords who didn’t expect me to take it with me?"

In response to the woman's post, there was overwhelming support for her in the comments as people declared that the landlord was wrong for trying to take advantage of the improvements she made to the garden.

One person wrote: "NTA. This is a very classic story of a landlord trying to benefit from home improvements paid for by the tenant.

"If your landlord was honest, he would have asked you how much you wanted to leave the garden as it was. You owe him nothing."

"NTA. Not at all," another person said. "If the owners want the garden looking nice they pay up and put in the effort themselves. Their house value is not your responsibility and any decent landlord/owner will put money into a property after a long-term tenant has been there."

Someone else added: "NTA. They used your property as a selling point. That's not your fault. They can easily hire someone to do some planting."

"NTA they didn't build the garden and you left it in the state it was first in," a fourth person commented. "They tried to sell the house with all your hard work still there, which is not theirs to sell."

It comes after a young woman recently turned to TikTok to share an unsettling story of how her landlord entered her property unannounced – forcing her to hide in the closet to avoid an awkward and potentially uncomfortable encounter.

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