The couple who ran the nursery in Berkhamstead feel ‘utterly betrayed’ by the charity
The nursery has now been dismantled and the buildings are abandoned after the property was repossessed
Jonathan and Vanessa Garstin campaigned to save the nursery and tea room after the National Trust demanded the fee, and collected a petition of more than 6,200 signatures with the support of Victoria Collins, the Liberal Democrat MP for Berkhamsted. Nevertheless, the National Trust did not see the closure of the business coming.
The Telegraph reports,
The National Trust is facing a legal battle after a dispute forced an elderly couple to close their tea room and nursery.
Jonathan Garstin, 78, and Vanessa Garstin, his wife, 77, claim that Little Heath Farm Nursery in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, was put out of business after the National Trust renegotiated a historic right of access.
The couple are now planning to mount a legal challenge against the National Trust over the dispute, which they say led to them losing their business.
They have launched a GoFundMe appeal to raise an initial £7,000 towards their legal battle for compensation.
Mr and Mrs Garstin, who ran the farm business on behalf of its retired owners, claim that a £335,000 access charge imposed by the Trust led the owners’ bank to cancel its refinancing of the property.
The bank took possession of the farm in April 2025, which led to Mr and Mrs Garstin’s eviction, before selling the property at auction in March 2026 for £650,000 – well below its £2m pre-dispute valuation.
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Mr Garstin told The Telegraph: “It’s appalling the way we’ve been treated. We agree the National Trust has to raise a lot of money, but not in the way it was done to us. We’ve been members of the Trust for 50 years, as long as we’ve been married, and now we feel utterly betrayed, shocked and appalled at the atrocious methods it used.
“Without warning, the Trust imposed a £335,000 charge to access Little Heath Farm across its land, which forced its closure and the loss of the nursery and tea-room business. Our advisers say the methods the Trust used were unlawful.”
Mr Garstin added: “We have both been made ill by what the Trust put us through. I had a mild stroke at Christmas in 2024, and another one on Christmas Eve in 2025 that caused a 70 per cent loss of sight in my right eye, which hasn’t recovered.
“We are heading into retirement, and we are frightened for our futures. We had made financial arrangements for these years, but the loss of the farm and all we put in destroyed that. The Trust took it away.”
The couple spent six years restoring and managing the original farm buildings Credit: Eddie Mulholland
The dispute had its roots in a strip of land along Little Heath Lane, over which the farm had enjoyed access for hundreds of years.
The tea room was a popular meeting place
When the National Trust took ownership of the land following its creation in 1895, these informal rights continued, allowing staff and the public to enjoy access to the tea room, shops and garden nursery sited in the original farm buildings, which Mr and Mrs Garstin spent six years restoring and managing.
But in early 2022, the National Trust proposed a formal arrangement by which £335,000 would be charged if buildings on the site were redeveloped for residential use. No planning consent for future development was in place at the time of the agreement.
The Trust said the fee – agreed by all parties in 2024 – was a standard overage charge that would only become payable if the site was sold with planning permission or once new homes were occupied, and that it did not affect the existing nursery.
However, Mr and Mrs Garstin say the fee forced the closure of the business when they tried to restore five 19th-century cottages on the site for rental.
They say this led their lender to deduct the £335,000 from the farm’s value, meaning that the property was no longer valuable enough to give the bank confidence that the loan could be repaid.
The couple’s new lenders then foreclosed on the loan, evicting Mr and Mrs Garstin and forcing the business, which was popular with locals and visitors, to shut.
The National Trust defended the introduction of the access fee, saying it was bound by charity law to maximise its assets.
At one stage in the fight to save the nursery and tea room, Mr and Mrs Garstin collected a petition of more than 6,200 signatures, while Victoria Collins, the Liberal Democrat MP for Berkhamsted, threw her support behind the couple.
The Garstins say that since their eviction, the old farm nursery and gardens, which date back to 1830, have fallen into ruin.
“It’s a shadow of its former self. All the work we carried out to restore the site and the buildings has been allowed to simply degrade,” said Mr Garstin. “It’s such a waste.”
Following the couple’s eviction from Little Heath Farm, the bank also launched proceedings to take possession of the Welsh home of the farm’s owners, on whose behalf the Garstins managed the tea room and nursery, to recoup some of its loss on the sale of the property.
Mr Garstin says the property has become ‘a shadow of its former self’ Credit: Eddie Mulholland
The National Trust has recently suffered a series of controversies, with criticism of its emphasis on its properties’ historical links with the slave trade, its members’ voting arrangements, and a switch to a plant-based menu at its cafés.
Membership of the conservation charity fell by 89,000 to 2.62 million in 2023-24, and to 2.61 million in 2024-25, with more visitors choosing to pay on the day as the cost-of-living crisis took its toll.
The National Trust defended its conduct over the £335,000 access fee.
A spokesman for the charity said: “The owners of Little Heath Farm Nursery and Tearoom needed access rights across National Trust land to develop five buildings on the site. As is usual for a substantial change or intensity of land use, and in line with our obligations as a charity to secure best public benefit from property transactions, we agreed an access fee following independent valuation and legal advice. All parties signed up to this fee in summer 2024.
“It would only become payable if the site was sold with planning permission, or once the new homes were occupied. As such we were very surprised to learn of the business’s sudden closure last year.”