Victoria Bouvet asked before she planted anything. She wanted to put her late mother’s rose bushes along the boundary of the Christchurch house she was renting, where a line of mature evergreens already ran along the fence, and the landlord agreed on one condition, that she leave the garden in the same state she found it. What followed was a tenancy dispute with an unusually warm ending, and a reminder of what a bond is actually for.
The account comes from a Tenancy Tribunal decision reported on 5 July 2026 by Open Justice reporter Brianna McIlraith and published by the NZ Herald and RNZ. Newswire has taken the facts below from that report of the decision.
Bouvet is a prize-winning gardener, and the roses were planted with care. Then the weather turned. She told the Tribunal that heavy rain flooded the backyard, that the drainage could not cope, and that she had raised the problem with the landlord repeatedly. By the end of the tenancy the roses and the older evergreens along the fence were dead or gone, and she had laid stones along the fence line where there had once been bark, to help manage the water.
When she moved out, the landlord, Whittle Knight Property Management Limited, declined to return her bond. Bouvet applied to the Tribunal to get it back, and the landlord counter-claimed for the missing and dead plants, and for tyre marks on the garage carpet, which it said were caused by her repeatedly turning her car to avoid a treadmill stored against the wall. It produced a report from a repair company and pointed out that a previous tenant had left no such marks.
Adjudicator Aneterea Andrew Aiolupotea looked at the photographs. “Photographs were also provided of the flooded area after it rained and text message correspondence between the parties praising the tenant for keeping the property in an immaculate condition,” he wrote in the decision. He found Bouvet was not responsible for the dead plants, and that the overall condition of the garden showed she had paid “consistent attention and respect for the property”. He noted that she had asked permission before planting the roses at all.
“I also accept the tenant would have taken the utmost care to ensure her mother’s roses flourished in the backyard and because of factors beyond her control, did not,” he wrote.
The garage went the same way. Bouvet’s position was that a garage is for parking cars and tyre marks on its carpet are ordinary use. The adjudicator agreed. “I find that the tenant used the garage for its ordinary purpose and did not subject it to any use beyond what would reasonably be expected,” he wrote. “The tyre marks and wear to the garage floor were fair wear and tear.” The landlord’s claims were dismissed and Bouvet was awarded her full $2,400 bond.
The decision turns on a distinction that decides most bond arguments. A tenant is responsible for damage they cause carelessly or deliberately, but not for fair wear and tear, and not for things beyond their control. The bond itself is the tenant’s money, held by Tenancy Services rather than the landlord, and a landlord who wants to keep any of it has to show the tenant is actually liable. Our guide to getting your bond back in New Zealand explains what a landlord can lawfully deduct, the cap on what a tenant pays for careless damage, and how a bond dispute is decided at the Tribunal.
Bouvet did not have to prove she was a good tenant. The photographs and the landlord’s own text messages did that for her. What the case shows is that the things a careful tenant does anyway, asking before making changes, keeping the written record, photographing problems as they happen, are exactly the things the Tribunal weighs when the bond is on the line. Her mother’s roses did not survive the Christchurch weather. Her record of looking after them did.
Have you had to go to the Tenancy Tribunal to get a bond back, or had a landlord try to charge you for fair wear and tear? Share your experience in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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