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!!

I think it would be a horrible thing to do. We need as much biodiversity in gardens as we can get and just grass is rubbish at supporting insect life.

That would be an absolute travesty.
If you can’t afford it and it doesn’t suit your needs, don’t buy it 🤷‍♀️

I haven't read the whole thread. It is a shame, but at the end of the day it has to be functional for you. Maybe live with it for a while to see what works and what you can manage. You can tweak things, it isn't like you are intending to rip out the whole lot.

I totally agree with you on that point. Where I disagree is that its going to be a lot harder to change than wallpaper because the acreage will remain and whatever they decide to do with it will be costly and/or time consuming if they choose not to do it themselves. I have already said that I know that my own beloved wild garden likely won't survive when i sell the house and I have made my peace with that.

Once you buy a house, you can do whatever you like with it. You make your home and garden fit your lives….even if that mean plastic grass!

Once you own the house, you own the garden. You can do what you please to suit how you live. The owners may have spent hours decorating the house, but if it’s not to your taste then you would change it … same with the garden. Maybe you could sell some of the plants / give them away where possible if you didn’t want to bin them … or create a compost heap.

Not the house for you then. It will cost you to demolish the garden and replace with whatever. If you don't want a garden and its benefits don't buy one.

What tosh … all because of a garden. People change things to suit how they live, not be dictated to by how the person had the property before them.

They do want a garden, just not one full of flowers and plants. So they can charge that … same a changing the inside of the house!

Exactly … some people are off their heads!!

Employ a gardener. A couple of hours a fortnight will keep on top of it

If I was the seller and a potential buyer told me they were going to rip out my beautiful garden in favour of a football pitch I probably wouldn’t sell the house to you.

i don’t understand how you think a veg garden is a good idea when you don’t enjoy gardening and say you have no time to do it.

I would ADORE a garden like that.

I agree with others, find somewhere else, something will come up. I too would feel heartbroken if I saw someone had destroyed that gorgeous patch of nature.

My garden is tiny in comparison.

When I first had my eye on this house it had shrubs, a lawn, flowerbeds and was teaming with birds and bugs and buzzing things. And a gorgeous little summerhouse.

I was thrilled when it went on the market, and then learned that the previous tenants had paved all over it.

Grrr.

AND they'd knocked the summerhouse down.

I am currently in the process of sorting it out. I have taken up a lot of the flags, and now need to get rid of rubble from the cement and rake the ground. Luckily they'd done a bit of a botch job so (with the help of a large dog) I have dug down and there is still soil. I should be able to throw some topsoil down and some compost and grass seed. I can't wait to have a patch of nature.
Please find somewhere else OP. Or could you just minimally create a 'football pitch' and other than a potter once a week to keep things tamed, leave the rest for wildlife? You don't have to have a perfectly coiffured garden.

Translation--some people care about things other than themselves.

And it can make a property much more attractive to other buyers.

Try and minimise these actions. You'll regret it down the line if you remember what it used to look like. Really hard to recreate an interesting mature garden..

We've dug up some roses that were maybe twenty years or so old. I can feel their ghosts whispering to me when I'm in the garden sometimes

Look for something else, kids don’t stay kids forever it would be a terrible thing to disturb all the wildlife you have within it .

Ignore these idiots … by the house and do what you like. What business is it of anyone’s anyway. Don’t know why you’re even asking the question … you know what people are like on here!

Sure, I’m sure you really worry about others when you’re doing something you want to do!! Have you consulted anyone about decisions you’ve made in your garden???

@Mum2HC I would buy it if I were you and wait for an year and see just how much maintenance the garden needs. We bought a house with a similar garden, but smaller, which was teeming with wildlife and much to our surprise. It has more or less taken care of itself with lots of plants self seeding and popping up in other areas of the garden so that it looks slightly different every year. We’ve kept on top of the hedges, which makes things look good and we keep the grass mowed but other than that we just pull out the weeds as and when. We’re not Gardeners but we do love sitting in the garden and hearing the hum of bees.

I think it’s important to note that when we first bought the house we were like you and fully intended to rip everything out and replace it was a lawn and borders but we didn’t have the money to do it so lived with it for a while and strangely it has grown on us and I can see now that our original plan would have been a crying shame.

We did take out some of the shrubs we didn’t like, which made it more to our taste.

Good luck with your move, OP

Of course you can, it will be your family’s home and fit your family’s purpose. I bet this couple didn’t have a garden like this when they were raising their family.
It’s going to be a Hugo job to turn it into what you want though, and very expensive.
if you don’t like gardening, do you need a veg patch? It’s still a lot of work.h
i completely re did my garden when I moved it, the previous owners taste wasn’t the same as mine. Rubble, dog crap and rubbish weren’t my thing.

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

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.

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. 😪💔

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,