AIBU to rip out a beautiful garden in potential house?

[Mum2HC]

Looking at new house - only one we like. Owner is an older couple who have spent years creating a garden worthy of an National Trust property!! The issue is we do not enjoy gardening and do not want to have to pay a gardener to keep all the flowers in check. Would it be awful to take out half the gardens flowers and replace with grass? It is 0.8 acre so a very big garden and our children would much prefer all turf to play football etc. It would feel almost criminal to do it but we don't want the upkeep - they also have a large rose garden which we would rather take out and have a vegetable garden. Is this all just too much?! It is the only house we like in our ideal location. It must be a full time job to look after it!!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Oh hell no

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.

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

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

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.

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).

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!!

This in spades.

Buy it, put the lawn where you want it (maybe get advice first).
Then gradually change the rest of it into a "wildlife friendly" garden.
More native shrubs and trees, long grass, wildflowers, long lasting perennials. Better for your bank balance and the local wildlife. And also bang on trend. Labour intensive gardens are beautiful but they are a full time job, and not as wildlife friendly as they appear.
Guilt be gone!

The reasons don"t matter. They're just offering a number for the vendors to accept or reject.

If they were pricing it realistically it would have been sold already.

It adds value to the right buyer and doesn't add value to someone who just wants astroturf, who with any sense would not be looking at it in the first place.

Someone who is selling a house with a specific special feature isn't targetting people that aren't interested in that feature and the price they will charge will reflect what people who want the feature are willing to pay for it.

Not everything is valuable to everyone. Some people think some art that sells for millions is rubbish and wouldn't pay a penny for it. That doesn't make it valueless.

I don't think this is unreasonable at all. I can't understand all the people saying "buy a different house", that's just ridiculous! They wouldn't be saying that if you were buying a house where you didn't like the kitchen and wanted to rip it out.

It's also exactly what I would do, I'd love a big garden for the kids to play in and I have friends round a lot so it would be heaven but I definitely wouldn't want all the upkeep of the flowers, just a big space to play.

I would try and get some of the plants taken away though, maybe put photos on SM and give people the opportunity to come and dig them up themselves and take them away.