Woman Feels Conflicted After Taking Garden Landlord Used To Sell Their House

Published November 5, 2021

If there's someone that people tend to complain about more than their bosses, it's their landlords.

Because while some can amaze tenants with their generosity, it's hardly uncommon for others to get into disputes about the rent, security deposits, and maintenance responsibilities.

And it's true that these disputes can crop up at any time, but they seem particularly likely when a landlord and their tenant are about to part ways.

In the case of one woman's story, however, the troubles started when it was time for both of them to leave.

For the past seven years, the woman has been renting the same house.

pixabay | congerdesign

And as she explained in a Reddit post, this house had a decently sized backyard, but it only consisted of a large mass of dirt with no lawn.

So over the years, she filled that space with vegetable gardens in transportable beds as well as a bunch of other furnishings to make it more green and home-like.

However, she was informed that her landlord would soon be selling the house and set her final move out date for a few months after this notice.

Walt Disney Pictures via YouTube

And thanks to the fact that nothing was planed into the ground or permanently affixed in the backyard, she was able to take her entire garden with her.

It took three days and some help, but the shed and greenhouse she installed were dismantled and the aforementioned transportable beds were loaded onto a truck.

But to her surprise, her former landlords were enraged by this and demanded that they returned the gardens to the property.

Columbia Pictures via YouTube

This was because they had used pictures of the backyard as part of the house's listing and any potential buyers kept walking out on them once they realized there was just dirt back there.

Although she had seen the landlords take photos of the backyard, she didn't realize this was why until she had moved out.

As she put it, "They’re accusing me of stealing their plants, and wrecking the backyard."

On one hand, the woman knows there isn't any legal weight to these accusations.

Walt Disney Television via Reddit

She said that the contract she signed allowed her to garden and photos she kept from when she first moved in showed that she left the backyard in the same state she found it in.

For that reason, the real estate agent signed off on the final inspection and she got her deposit back.

However, what leaves her feeling conflicted is that some of her coworkers pointed out, in her words, "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."

But when she reached out to Reddit, they figured this was a problem the landlords had brought upon themselves.

As one person said, "This is a very classic story of landlord trying to benefit of 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."

As another user put it, "I think the key point was nothing was permanent. If you had dug up a ton of plants and left the backyard a bunch of holes, well then I would teeter more the other way."

So as far as they were concerned, the woman is as fine morally as she is legally.

h/t: Reddit | GardeningMonster

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