Updated court guidance on how to establish adverse possession – there's no place like gnome
Summary
In Dobson v Unsted (2026) the Upper Tribunal has given practical guidance on adverse possession claims flowing from a very British fact pattern. Cutting a long story (and lawn) short, adverse possession is established by dealing with land in a way that would be expected of an occupying owner. In this case, mowing the grass, raking leaves and scarifying the lawn for more than 10 years were sufficient. The legal owners' garden gnome, belatedly placed on the lawn to reclaim ownership, was sent packing, and the appellants were entitled to be registered as owners.
The facts
The owners of 29 Pointers Hill in Dorking applied to be registered as the owners of a tiny triangle of land (roughly 1 metre by 2.3 metres) sitting between the shared driveway and legal boundary with their neighbours at number 27. The land had been part of number 27's registered title since the two houses were carved out of a single plot in 1994, but for decades, nobody at number 27 had done anything with it.
The First-tier Tribunal rejected most of the original claim, finding that there was adverse possession only from 2018, when the applicants planted a flower bed. This was five years short of the ten years required to succeed. On appeal, the Upper Tribunal (in a judgement by Elizabeth Cooke) overturned that decision, holding that the applicants and their predecessors had been in adverse possession since at least 2002.
Why did the appeal succeed?
The central question was whether routine garden maintenance, including mowing, raking, clearing twigs, letting children play on the grass, replacing topsoil, planting herbs, and placing a "29" house number sign, could amount to adverse possession.
The Upper Tribunal held that it could. The reasoning turned on a well-established but often underappreciated principle: the nature of the land determines what acts of possession are required. For example, if all you can do on marshland is go shooting, shooting is enough. If a rough patch at the end of a garden is only good for a compost heap and some weeding, that will do. And if the land in question is a patch of open lawn in a street of open-plan front gardens, mowing and routine maintenance is precisely what an owner would do with it.
The FTT had dismissed mowing as merely "tidy and neighbourly", holding that something more, such as digging a flower bed or putting up a fence, was needed to claim possession of an open lawn. The Upper Tribunal disagreed. Judge Cooke noted that putting up a fence in a neighbourhood of open gardens would have looked "incongruous" and that requiring a change of use to establish adverse possession of a lawn was wrong in law.
Crucially, the Upper Tribunal found that the FTT had erred in assessing each act of possession in isolation rather than looking at the full picture. Individually, children playing on the grass would not be enough; a house number sign would not be enough; wheeling the mower across the land would not be enough. But taken together, the cumulative effect was clear: the applicants and their predecessors were treating the land as their own, and nobody at number 27 was doing anything with it at all. As Judge Cooke said, the “grass is, one might say, greener on the other side of the drive”.
The Upper Tribunal put it bluntly: "People do not generally mow their neighbours' grass without their agreement. Nor do they let their children play on it. Nor do they replace topsoil on it or plant herbs in it".
What about the sign?
The appellants placed a "29" house number sign on the disputed land in 2016, first on the verge and then on the disputed triangle itself. The FTT had held that this was "insufficient to indicate possession", reasoning that the sign had to be visible and was adjacent to the right of way serving number 29 and so did not assist the applicants' case.
The Upper Tribunal took a different view. Whilst acknowledging that the sign alone would not have been enough to establish adverse possession, Judge Cooke held that when considered alongside the totality of the appellants' activities, mowing, raking, planting, children playing, it formed part of a cumulative picture of possession.
This analysis is consistent with conclusions drawn in our previous article, Give me a Sign, in which we considered two Upper Tribunal decisions on the effect of signage in property disputes. The key conclusions from that article remain relevant here: signs are at best part of a broader strategy to manage land and prevent adverse rights arising; they are no substitute for vigilantly monitoring land and legal rights to prevent encroachment; and vaguely worded or poorly placed signs are unlikely to have significant legal effect. In adverse possession cases, a sign alone may be equivocal, but it can contribute to the overall picture of possessory conduct.
What does this mean for landowners?
Adverse possession does not require obvious physical acts, such as putting up a fence or wall. In the right context, quietly maintaining a patch of grass for long enough can be sufficient.
For landowners, the practical takeaways are:
- Know your boundaries. Small parcels of land are worth understanding. This is especially true in larger parcels or development sites, where the value of such land might not be evident until much later in time.
- Use your land. Even small or seemingly insignificant areas should not be neglected. If someone else is maintaining part of your land and you are doing nothing, the clock may already be ticking on adverse possession (or alternatively on the acquisition of an easement – see e.g. our previous article, Access easements: ancient law, modern problems, lost modern grant.
- Act promptly. If you spot a neighbouring owner treating part of your land as their own, do not ignore it. Interrupt a possession claim before it matures.
Whilst this case related to a tiny triangle of residential garden land, the law applies equally to all land and property.
As for the respondents in this case, they eventually tried to take back possession of the disputed land in May 2023 by removing the applicants' plants and installing a garden gnome. By then, it was too little too late. Twenty-one years of quiet (other than mowing days), unchallenged use had done its work, and the gnome was sent packing. Some might suggest it was a victory for taste as well as established legal principles.
Please find a link to the full judgment here: Dobson v Unsted [2026] UKUT 93 (LC) (02 March 2026)
