A keen gardener is being sued by her wasp-sensitive neighbour in a 'trivial' £200,000 court fight over fruit falling from her apple tree onto next door's lawn.
Dunsfold and Hascombe Horticultural Society member Antoinette Williams is at war with her Surrey neighbour Barbara Pilcher, who claims she has plagued her life with smelly compost bins and rotting fruit from her apple tree.
The court heard that Mrs Williams moved into £600,000 Frensham Cottage, Dunsfold, near Godalming, nearly 40 years ago, while Mrs Pilcher bought the adjoining three-bedroom £500,000 Farleigh Cottage, in 2010.
Wasp-allergic Mrs Pilcher claims she is now a 'prisoner in her own home' and has been unable to use the bottom of her garden due to the pong of composters and hordes of stinging insects flocking to fallen apples which have dropped from Mrs Williams' overhanging tree onto her grass.
If left on the ground, the apples rot and attract wasps, said her barrister, which is alarming for Mrs Pilcher as she has a wasp allergy and was hospitalised in 2018 following an attack.
Despite collecting around 1,000 fallen apples from the ground in her desperation to avoid being stung, Mrs Pilcher claims she continues to fear falling apples and wasps on her own patch.
Central London County Court heard that her legal bill could already exceed £200,000 in the fight with her green-fingered neighbour.
Barbara Pilcher, of Dunsfold, Surrey, is understood to have piled up more than £200,000 in legal bills in her bitter battle with neighbour Antoinette Williams over their adjacent gardens
Mrs Pilcher claims she has suffered years of harassment, trespass and nuisance and seeks compensation - plus an injunction to prevent any future problems.
But gardener Mrs Williams is defending the claim, and says her neighbour's case is groundless and 'trivial'.
She also told Judge Laurence Cohen QC that Mrs Pilcher ramped up tensions herself when she 'made a very rude gesture' at her in a clash over car parking.
In 2013, tensions developed over the boundary between their two rear gardens, followed later on by claims from Mrs Pilcher that Mrs Williams had blocked her right of way through her garden and allowed damp to filter into her home.
Oliver Newman, Mrs Pilcher's barrister, told Central London County Court the first alleged 'incident of trespass' came in April 2013 when Mrs Williams strayed into the neighbouring garden and removed a plant.
Other flare-ups followed over the months and years - with Mrs Williams allegedly 'shouting and laughing at her', blocking her parking outside her own home, and 'repeatedly and unnecessarily' churning up the grass verge in her car.
Dunsfold and Hascombe Horticultural Society member Antoinette Williams (pictured) is being sued for years of alleged harassment, trespass and nuisance
The feuding neighbours had one highly-charged brush in January 2015, when Mrs Pilcher called the police, complaining her neighbour had
