St Ives Chase millionaire neighbours take backyard fight to court as fierce dispute breaks out over bamboo plants

A bitter row over bamboo plants has landed two neighbors on an upscale Sydney street in court.

Nicholas and Lisa-Maree Beswick bought a four-bedroom property worth $2.5 million in the leafy Upper North Shore suburb of St Ives Chase, in Sydney’s northwest, in October 2020.

Their home shares a rear boundary with a lot owned by David Sandig, whose family has lived there for 30 years.

In 2015, five years before the Beswicks moved into the area, Mr Sandig planted four clumps of slender weaver bamboo near the fence line between the two properties.

Although planted six feet apart, they quickly grew into a ‘dense screen’, according to a ruling released this week by the NSW Supreme Court.

“The (Beswicks) alleged that during their appeal the bamboo was 3 to 4 meters high and subsequently grew to a height of 8 to 10 metres, which seriously obstructed their previous view,” the judgment added.

The Bewsicks spoke to Mr Sandig and his son about the fence about the bamboo privacy screen in 2023 before sending him an email in November that year asking him to prune the bamboo and also replace the fence.

“On January 2, 2024, Mr. Sandig responded that the applicants had previously acknowledged his “need for privacy screening as the upstairs windows look directly down into our living room and bedroom windows,” the judgment said.

In 2015, five years before the Beswicks moved into the area, Mr Sandig planted four clumps of slender weaver bamboo near the fence line between the two properties (photo: the properties from above)

“Mr. Sandig stated that he had recently completed extensive pruning of his trees and border vegetation and noticed an existing tree in Applicants’ backyard that was taller than the bamboo and was blocking Applicants’ upstairs windows.”

He said he would remove individual stems if necessary, but would not reduce the height of the bamboo.

Mr Beswick responded later that day that his hedge trimming had invaded their own privacy and reiterated his request to Mr Sandig to cut the bamboo ‘to a height that will give you privacy and restore our views across the valley’.

But Mr. Sandig did not respond to this email, nor to a third party repeating the same request.

The Beswicks then launched their legal battle.

In July, the court visited the properties to view the offending bamboo plants, which had been pruned to a height of 2.5 meters just five days earlier.

But the court relied on photographs taken in 2023 and this year which “show tall bamboo growing along the common boundary and extending into the applicants’ plot, apparently reaching a height of 8-10 m, a height around the top of the applicants’ first. floor windows’.

As a result, Acting Commissioner John Douglas said she was “satisfied that the applicants’ obstruction has been serious in recent times.”

Although the application was rejected, the judge encouraged the Bewsicks to file a new application with more compelling evidence if the bamboo returned to its ‘former ‘wild’ state’ (stock image)

However, Mr Douglas was critical of the “inadequacy” of the Beswick’s evidence that their views had deteriorated significantly since they moved in, compared to Mr Sandig’s “evidence showing the presence of substantial communal boundary trees before and after this time’.

‘Whilst I accept that the bamboo has obstructed the applicants’ views to a greater extent than during the applicants’ appeal, my sense of the situation is that the applicants may have initially been given a wide but narrow brief view of their trees, but the respondent maintained a high degree of privacy in his home and yard as a result of the trees,” the judgment said.

Beswick’s case was dismissed.

However, Mr Douglas encouraged Mr Sandwick to ‘manage and maintain the bamboo more effectively than in the past by removing the stems growing towards the applicants and pruning the bamboo in height’.

‘It is clear that the maintenance regime of removing the stems individually was inadequate, and it is not difficult to alternatively attach a hook to the end of a cut, previously pruned stem and use this to bend down long stems and reduce their height,” the judgment said.

The judge encouraged the Bewsicks to file another application with more compelling evidence if the bamboo returned to its “former ‘wild’ state.”

Attempts have been made to contact both parties.