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 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.

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.

@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

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.

Yes, I thought the same!

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.

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

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

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

@WildGarden a very sensible post and excellent advice.

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.

Please don't buy the house.

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.

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 will find a fair amount is perennial or looks after itself and the gardener will be for maintenance, a decent gardener could be £25/35ph, buying a house like that Id learn or budget for a few hours per month of the gardener.
Alternatively, ask them to take what they can and offer others to any gardening groups/charity

I agree with the people who are saying how important it is for the environment to have flourishing gardens, but I do think that there is a middle ground here. The OP has the right to have a garden that suits her and her family - but I believe that can be done without wholesale destruction of what is already there.

Some of it may well be fairly low maintenance, so could easily stay. Many of the other plants could be relocated to other people's gardens. She isn't talking about ripping it all out, and turfing the whole thing - so maybe she can be encouraged to find a balance.

ive always been a gardener - I would say tread carefully with well established trees or large plants -you can’t really buy a 20 year old tree - - but other than that do exactly what you want - any future owners of the house can put back in beds and plants, you have a free pass -I bet one reason the elderly couple are moving is because the garden is too big for them.

Put in the lawn -buy a robot mower and you don’t need to worry about it again !!

I have been down this road and I'd suggest considering the following.

Re the house itself - an acre of garden gets old pretty fast as a non gardener. You are looking at the herbaceous borders wondering what it all is and how to maintain it. Look beyond that, look at the hedging that will need trimming, the mature trees along the boundary that will rain autumnal foliage for 3 months and require raking. Look at the sheer scale of it and consider will your current lawnmower, electric [probably] hedge trimmer etc cut the mustard or wear out within months.

Our biggest lesson is that we've had to invest in public park scale equipment so a hundred pound rechargeable hedge trimmer has turned into a Stihl petrol one at three times the cost. We've had to buy new lawnmowers, strimmers, a long handled hedgetrimmer, chainsaw, leaf collection blower/sucker. So even if you radically simplify the garden you will need to step up your gardening game / employ a gardener / teach your kids and make it chores. We involved the kids when we first moved in and they were primary aged. Now that they are teenagers their only interest is in hanging out in the neglected trampoline when friends come around, the swing and throwing a ball for the dog. Persuading them to help in the garden requires cold hard cash. You may get more longevity with boys if they are keen on sports.

If you decide it's definitely worth it to get the house, say nothing until you have exchanged. Make a plan. A 10x50m rose garden sounds amazing and is possibly the most low maintenance thing there but if you want to turn it over to lawn, then simply tell the old owners that you have three young kids and will be doing that and would they like to take the roses or gift them to friends and neighbours. No reason why they can't come and take them after you've completed when it's autumn and more suitable time to do so. You can have beautiful flowers all summer and they can come and prune and dig them out. Lay the lawn in the autumn and it should be good for football by next spring.

A mature herbaceous border is something that a decent gardener can come in and blitz a couple of times a year. If the ground is covered, that will stop weeds coming through. So I would start with the areas you definitely want to turn over to grass and deal with those so there is a clear play area. After that, it's survival of the fittest in the plant space. But you won't need a weekly gardener. Quarterly will do but if you are buying a house this big, it costs more to maintain and that's just the size of it. As plants die off you can replace with something hardier, we have moved to a lot of drought proof plants as the summers have gotten drier and I can't justify gallons of water on the flowers. Water storage is a drop in the ocean in a large garden.

Also check the fences are in good condition. Expensive to replace if they are nearing end of life and the boundaries are yours to keep up.

Lastly and I'll be shot on here for this. Is there a potential to subdivide the plot so you keep a smaller garden ?