Two days ago my wife and I received a Section 21 notice for repossession from our letting agent, Atkinson McLeod, on behalf of our landlord, Sue (not her real name). Sue intends to make us homeless in December at what is bound to be the next height of the pandemic. And she is doing this to us because she is deeply, twistedly, pathetically angry that we have been growing vegetables over the last few months in the garden we legally share with her.
Sue lives above us and we rent her basement on an Assured Shorthold Tenancy. The advertisements for our apartment stated that shared access to the garden was included in the lease. It was a big draw for us - we’d been longing for proper outdoor space for years. In our tenancy agreement, which we scoured before beginning our tenancy, we also saw that we had obligations to tend to the garden. We figured that this was just our landlord covering her back in case we trashed it - even though it literally says we have to mow the lawn - and at least we had evidence that we were genuinely, legally renting a home with a garden. We were so excited to have a garden - sky! Grass! We could sit at dusk and feel nature - such a rare thing in London.
Sue harassed us consistently from the start of the tenancy. She tried to gain entry to our home repeatedly without our consent, ignored repair requests, reported us for invented misbehaviours. One month we would find out that she’d complained about us ‘kicking doors’, the next we would find out she had accused us of leaving trash that wasn’t even ours (it was in fact hers, we saw her gardener disposing of it). Sue instructed us that we weren’t to make any written requests to the letting agent, we were to only go through her verbally. Soon afterwards, we found out via Atkinson McLeod that she had been spying on us through our back window and was concerned about where we were drying clothes. She tried to get rid of our cat. She demanded a random property inspection. She sent us a handwritten note announcing that if any of our mail accidentally ended up on her doormat, she would be sending it away. Duly, things went missing - gifts from family members, cards - we waited, terrified, for months for immigration documents, believing she had sent them back. Throughout it all, she never acknowledged we were a couple. We were just ‘friends’. And she didn’t like us being there, that was clear. She bristled, huffed, tutted and slammed her back door behind her when she saw us expressing affection to each other.
When the pandemic hit and lockdown started, we were grateful to have a home with garden access. We’d barely used it before because she had made us feel so intimidated and uncomfortable. My wife, Meghan, is studying horticulture so saw it as the perfect opportunity to grow some vegetables in pots and improve our apocalypse survival skills. We took the only available corner in the garden, between Sue’s back window and the garden wall. The rest of the garden is taken up with her plants and lawn. We didn’t uproot anything, we didn’t touch her plants or even the soil. We pitched up some pots, filled them with our own compost, and Meghan began to plant.
Meghan’s efforts were amazingly successful. She tended to her crops meticulously. Within a few months we had a steady stream of courgettes, some corn, sugar snap peas, runner beans, bell peppers. All from pots in our garden. It was glorious to behold. We shared each new stage of flowering and fruiting to friends on Instagram, we were so excited to have our first harvests. But the complaints soon started rolling in. We were told via Atkinson McLeod - they started calling us on a blocked number - that Sue was unhappy with how many plants there were. It felt so ridiculous, so mean, so petty in such a terrible time for so many people. We were using just one corner of the garden. The garden we rented as part of our home.
Eventually, Sue began to harass us in person about the plants. Her daughter came out and photographed them, telling us there were too many, saying we should have asked. Soon, Sue shouted through our back door at us, while we were working at our desks. In her words, we had ‘no right to plant vegetables’ in ‘her’ garden. We were seriously rattled - she’d started crossing significant boundaries by harassing us in our own home. Later that day, she kicked over our outdoor chairs in front of us. That evening, we found our new hose had been slashed, there was a deep cut in it so it no longer worked.
We received the eviction notice the morning after this incident. That same day, Sue berated us in the garden, saying previous tenants ‘didn’t have the audacity to grow vegetables’. We said we were being made homeless over some courgettes. She didn’t care. It was, and remains, astonishing to confront so much callousness.
And so it is, that in December, at probably the second peak of a global pandemic, we will be forced out of our home by an abusive landlord who, by all accounts, is jealous of my wife’s vegetables. In her own words, we have no right to grow them. No right to grow. What a sentiment. What a thing to forbid and despise. Growth, abundance, nurture. None of these belong to us - no, we are audacious to think so. So we will wait for the winter, watch our crops die, pack up our things and continue searching.
(Edited 13/08/20 to include reference to our Landlord tampering with our mail and to further protect landlord’s identity)