AIBU to rip out a beautiful garden in potential house?

Well our rose garden is perfectly good for creatures. We use manure and that's it. They look beautiful - and have lots of ladybirds.

There is a whole community of gardeners - including my parents - who have extensive gardens with almost no chemicals. And my father, in particular, cares very much about the wildlife and is a regular reporter of insect levels to the butterfly conservation org, so it just isn't true that perfect flowerbeds don't harbour and encourage wildlife and insects. You can have a pretty garden that is nature friendly - and to be honest the type of planting in the photos the OP posted do tend to attract creatures. I can admit those low level display beds of annuals such as you sometimes get with municipal or council planting with lots of bare soil between is not always the sort of haven it could be, but that isn't the style of garden OP has posted.

You're right. Traditional and wild plants and trees are the best for wildlife. However pp is right anything is better than nothing. What terrifies me is that so many housing estates are being built with tiny and sterile gardens and many people who buy these houses are doing absolutely nothing to encourage any wildlife. Neat and often plastic lawns and a trampoline do absolutely nothing. It really doesn't take much to keep a bit of lavender or salvia alive or a shrub that butterflies and birds will enjoy. On its own it might not be much but if everone on a housing estate did this it would be more than enough to keep the birds and bees happy. I think we underestimate how much joy nature brings to children too. My dd has a trampoline and a climbing frame and loves them but it's nothing compared to the smile on her face when she catches a ladybird or sees a butterfly or a bird lands within inches of her whilst we're eating outside.

Please don't buy the house.

I don't understand the problem or the angst. It's your house, do whatever you want with it. Sod the garden, pour concrete all over, if you wish.

I bought a house with a similar garden, albeit smaller. Got rid of it all. I hate gardens, gardening, plants, all the vermin like chirpy, annoying birds and suchlike. My house, my money, and I'll do whatever I please with it. I didn't really need the outside space at all, as I'm never there in the 'garden', so it just stands vacant, but I couldn't find a suitable, large enough, city flat.

The preciousness around gardens needs to stop. Those 'so sorry' for the beautiful plants are welcome to buy the house and garden it.

@WildGarden a very sensible post and excellent advice.

This....veg is SO much more maintenance than an established garden tbh. We have about 1.6 acres, and the worst part is the grass!!! The plants, flowers and trees etc are the easy part.

But if you do rip stuff out...please donate plants to the neighbours!

I love beautiful gardens, so I'm kind of biased and would say no, don't do it. A huge lawn is equally backbreaking though as it will need mowing every couple of weeks in the summer. I was never into gardening either and we moved into a house in the opposite situation. Huge lawn and any flower beds were just full of green weed stuff. We put a freestanding swimming pool on the lawn for about 3 summers, but even that's a lot of hard work and destroyed the bit of the lawn that it stood on. My neighbour's garden is like Kew Gardens, and I craved a beautiful garden like that, so gradually I've dug out curved flower beds and have been putting in plants, flowers and shrubs and it's such a joy to see it evolve. I work full-time too, so don't have that much time. But, it will be your house, so of course you can do what you like, but as the kids grow up and leave home, and you have more time on your hands, you might just find yourself craving the garden it once was.

The point being, that if you actually care about providing a habitat for wildlife you don't fashion picture perfect flowerbeds which usually lack the kind of shelter and food that actually helps wildlife, so emotionally blackmailing the OP with that is disingenuous.

I agree that concrete is hardly preferable, but let's not pretend that a rose garden is helping local wildlife in any meaningful way.

What is so special about the house OP that it's the only one that will possibly suit your needs when the garden is completely not fit for your purpose? It's going to be a mammoth and expensive job to make this garden how you want it. Have you factored in this cost? Don't underestimate how expensive landscaping is. Yes it would be very sad to eliminate so much biodiversity and wildlife habitats but on a selfish note that isn't really your biggest issue.

I mean that isn't actually true.

There are tons of things crawling around in my grass.

Maybe if I cut it it would be different.

We were in the same position- old couple, hugely cultivated garden etc - all very nice BUT it really didn't suit our life.

We kept it and made DS go over to the playground and fields to run around BUT I regret it and if we had that time again I'd absolutely have changed it to suit us better.

We have made changes over time (removed a LOT of stones and replaced with earth for a veg patch etc) but I wish we'd put in a lovely big lawn for DS.

It's YOUR garden and YOUR family. You're not living in it to please others!

FFS we kept ours and I still get shit of other people for using the sauna to store my Xmas decs. I hate saunas and that others think it's 'criminal' to not use it is utterly irrelevant!

Please yourselves, OP. It's not like you're planning on flattening it for extra parking or putting in artificial grass!

Most wildllife prefers a perfectly shaped flower bed to concrete or football pitch.

And lots of gardeners are very careful about chemicals and only use what is absolutely necessary. I think that is just an excuse to not care.

Sorry, just seen they’re not photos of the actual garden 😆

Perfectly manicured gardens are usually not good for wildlife either. The best approach is to just let things go wild, rather than creating perfectly shaped flower beds, usually with the aid of chemicals.

Sorry, I cannot make sense of this response. Can you rephrase?

It will cost them a fortune to dig up all the flowerbeds and turf over. Thousands of pounds. I bet they absolutely can afford the occasional gardener but they just don't want to. I'm sad at the thought of the hundreds of species of different insects/birds/mammals that no doubt live in such a beautiful garden 💔 & what will happen to them when OP turfs over it all. She'll hugely regret it when her kids no longer play football in the garden & she gets into gardening as she ages I bet. & she pops to a garden centre and realises how much plants and shrubs cost these days & the reality dawns.

Yes, I thought the same!

Having seen photos of the garden, if I was the seller I wouldn’t sell to you! Sorry. The garden must have taken years of hard work and expense to establish, and yes it would be criminal to rip it out.

@Mum2HC buy the house. Can you divide it off and rent it to a neighbouring house long term? Or even sell it to a neighbour? Or look not getting planning permission for a section of it to have another house and keep the garden for that house of you have the access.
If not buy it, get a planner in and make the garden work for the time you have

This 100%. A mature garden can be kept with minimal upkeep, I started watching Gardeners World during lockdown and I’m hooked! Mulch is your friend.

I don't think you are being unreasonable, @Mum2HC - the garden has to suit you and your family. My parents spent years making a magnificent garden, and I have fond memories of how lovely it was - but I have no doubt that it has changed massively in the years since my mum moved out, after my dad died.

It could be a bit sad to think of all that work being undone, but I prefer to be happy that the new owners are enjoying their garden as they want it to be.

I think a previous poster made a very good point about seeing if local gardeners/gardening groups want to come and take away the plants you'd be removing - mature plants like these would cost £££ to buy, and it would be lovely if they could live on in someone else's garden, giving them pleasure.

It might also be worth getting some advice before you start, to see what parts of the garden might be low maintenance - so you can leave those parts, and enjoy them, without committing to lots of gardening.

Can you pay for a consult on what’s high maintenance and what’s not? It would be criminal to take the roses out and they are very low maintenance and hardy, they survive droughts here in Australia. I have roses, and veggies, and I spend 100x as much time on the veggies as the roses and don’t get much veggies out of it for that! I’m not a very good gardener and work full time with 3 very active young children so the basketball court and climbing frame and trampoline are all essential, I do get that,

I feel sad about all the abundance of wildlife that currently call this garden home. At least wait til the autumn before you rip out all the plants and flowers so you aren't disturbing caterpillars and nesting birds. What an absolute waste of a glorious garden and probably 40 years of hard work by the owners you are buying from. Posts like this make me so sad. Contact a local horticultural group and see if they have contacts for cheap gardeners or maybe retired locals might be willing to maintain it for you for a small fee. Never in a million years would I think of buying such a property and my 1st thought is 'I must rip it out and replace it with grass.' You'll be destroying so many fragile ecosystems if you do that. 😪💔

Once you've bought it, its yours. No escaping that.

But it would be devestating for the wildlife which is already being pushed to the brink, and a crying shame.
So I hope you find a different house that suits you.

Oh please don’t, it’s beautiful and it’s a crime against nature to pull it apart