AIBU to rip out a beautiful garden in potential house?

This in spades.

Haha I'm sure the sellers would be very impressed if the op offered 10k less because she needed to make the garden less beautiful!!

Well obviously when/if you owned it it's entirely up to you what you do with it but I think you're mad to take on a 0.8 acre of a garden if you don't like gardening. Most people round my way would fence a large chunk of it and rent it to a local farmer or horse owner.

Getting rid of all those plants and laying to grass would be a huge job, especially if you do it yourself.

I love gardening and have a decent sized veg/fruit patch and given the choice I'd ditch our lawn as dd has grown up, but we have a family house so for future resale reasons it stays. But DH is responsible for it because I cannot be arsed with the constant mowing/strimming through summer.

Personally in your position I'd avoid because there is no very low cost/effort option with 0.8 acres (aside from previous rent out option and even that brings issues).

It might not be as much work as you think though? Mature bushes and shrubs need a trim once or twice a year, and a bit of extra weeding. I couldn’t rip out a lovely garden but once it’s your house then it’s yours to do what you like with I guess.

Did you not notice the garden when you bought the house?

I don't agree that a beautiful complicated garden adds value. It can put buyers off.

I am house hunting at the minute and have discounted houses with lovely gardens as I know I just couldn't maintain them.

This is the sensible and reasonable thing to do OP.
There are many houses; there are not many really lovely gardens.

I am house hunting at the minute and have discounted houses with lovely gardens as I know I just couldn't maintain them. I also sold a relative's home which had a beautiful mature garden that I paid someone to keep tidy during the sale process in addition to working on it myself. I was saddened to see the weeds take over afterwards and the hedges get overgrown. But if the house ticks all your boxes it's up to you, the garden has to work for your family and you can't maintain a shrine to the previous owners.

Oh hell no

You do you.

But it seems a bit weird that you would buy a house with a fantastic garden that adds value and then rip it out. So you are paying extra for something you will destroy.

it also seems a bit weird that you can afford a house with 0.8 of an acre of land and fantastic gardens but can't afford a gardener.

But at the end of the day once you sell a house you no longer get to dictate what the new owners do with it. Unless you try to impose some sort of covenant.

Agreed DH bought a second hand lawn tractor which made mowing much faster. Kids need grass.
A greenhouse for growing and potting on is a good idea

It's not so much the growing it's the watering.

If you're making raised beds OP put them near the water butt/tap.

Potatoes grow well in our big wood trough on concrete. But in the ground nada.

We bought the typical “old person house” immaculate, incredible gardens, house falling down as they moved in 30 years ago and did the bare minimum inside.
My DDad came and tackled the garden for us over a couple of years(!) to make it more manageable, sympathetically thinning out the vast amount of shrubs, swapping high maintenance flowers and plants for perennials that look after themselves and consolidating the roses into one place so now all we have to do is weed, feed and mow. It is possible to keep a beautiful garden but make it much lower maintenance to suit your lifestyle

We moved all the roses created a bed under the leylandi hedge. Replanted the roses and grow the herbs in-between the roses to deter aphids. It's low maintenance and pretty. The climbers grow up the hedge.

I'm a great gardener, OP. My garden is stunning. I have green fingers and know exactly what grows where, when and how. BUT, I'm buggered if I can grow vegetables. Good luck with that.

The principle is the same though.

Once it's the OP's house they can do what they like with it, assuming nothing is listed or anything or course. Not buying a place because the previous owners might be upset with what you do with it is just absurd.

My old house when we moved in had no garden at all, just a patch of mud and I spent hours digging it out, planting shrubs and a wildflower meadow etc. I can see now on google maps it's all paved now, but who cares? It's not my house any more. Now I have a larger garden that bar a couple of raised beds is just grass which my robot lawn mower diligently mows for me. All I do is pull out the odd weed in the few beds I have and go round it with a strimmer from time to time. Far less work than it was before.

It would be sheer vandalism.

Yes, you would have every legal right but if you bought a Monet original you would be perfectly entitled to take a pair of scissors to it. It doesn’t mean it’s the ‘right’ thing to do.

Please don’t. There is not so much beauty in the world to justify destroying it for our own convenience.

Ugh. I'd plant fruit bushes and trees in an area like that as well as vegetables. Sounds ideal with the paths already in place.

Buy the house and do what you need to with the garden. I wouldn't risk not buying the house (as some have suggested) in case another suitable property isn't available.

The previous owners enjoyed it the way it suited them. Your children will enjoy it the way it suits your needs.

When you buy it you might decide to keep some part of it as it is and only charge some of it. It may grow on you.

Ah you saw right through that! Little market towns do have honesty boxes though, and I think they work well when people have a surfeit of nice plants and others are willing to pay for them.

For perspective 0.8 acre is about 10 allotment plots.

My one allotment plot keeps me occupied in my spare time all summer.

Its beautiful but virtually a full time job to keep it up.
If you buy it its yours to do with what you wish. Maybe you could post on a local.facebook page for people to come and take what they want

Ouch. That kind of hurts my heart a little. I bet your friend misses her lovely view.

Except that OP not taking on this property doesn’t mean that the person who does buy it won’t come in and level it, sell it off to developers in a garden grab deal etc.

It’s up to OP whether she choses to try and preserve some of it [and I hope she can, whilst adapting it to her children’s needs], but not buying it offers absolutely no guarantees that the garden will remain in the future. In fact the likelihood is that any future buyer will rip much of it out.

If she loves the house, location and all the rest that it offers in an area where very little comes onto market, she should absolutely buy it and grapple with how to proceed with the garden once she is in situ.

ETA just to add… it is our lawns that require the most input and maintenance. At least half a day a fortnight (or weekly in the growing season if it rains a lot). The shrubs/flowers only need annual titivating… never underestimate the commitment of a large lawn!