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 neighbours in an upmarket Sydney street in court.

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

Their home shares a rear boundary with a property 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 weavers bamboo near the fence line between the two properties.

Although they were planted one-two metres apart, they grew quickly to form a 'dense screen', a judgement published this week by the NSW Supreme Court stated.

The (Beswicks) alleged the bamboo was 3-4 m tall upon their occupation and had subsequently grown to a height of 8-10 m to severely obstruct their former view,' the judgment added.

The Bewsicks spoke to Mr Sandig and his son over the fence in 2023 about the bamboo privacy screen before emailing him in November of that year to request that the bamboo be trimmed and also that fence be replaced.

'On 2 January 2024, Mr Sandig replied that the applicants had previously acknowledged his "need for privacy screening given your upstairs windows look directly down into our living and bedroom windows",' the judgment noted.

'Mr Sandig said he had extensively pruned his trees and boundary vegetation recently and noted an existing tree in the applicants' back yard that was taller than the bamboo and was screening the applicants' upstairs windows.'

He said he would remove individual stems as necessary, but would not reduce the bamboo's height.

Mr Beswick responded later that day to say his hedge pruning had reduced their own privacy and he reiterated his request for Mr Sandig to cut the bamboo 'to a height that allows you privacy and reinstates our view across the valley'.

But Mr Sandig did not reply to this email, nor to a third 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 trimmed to a height of 2.5m just five days before.

But the court relied on photographs taken in 2023 and this year which 'show tall bamboo growing along the common boundary and arching into the applicants' property, 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 the applicants' view obstruction was recently severe'.

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

'While I accept the bamboo grew to obstructed the applicants' views to a greater extent than upon the applicants' occupation, my sense of the situation is that the applicants may have initially gained broad but narrow short views over their trees, but the respondent retained a high degree of privacy in his dwelling and yard as a result of the trees,' the judgment noted.

The Beswick's case was refused.

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

'Clearly, the maintenance regime of individual stem removal was inadequate, and it is not difficult to alternatively connect a hook to the end of a cut previously pruned stem and use this to arch long stems down and reduce their length,' Judge XXX said.

The Judge encouraged the Bewsicks to submit another application with more conclusive evidence if the bamboo returned to its 'prior "wild" state'.

Attempts were made to contact both parties.