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 if you buy the house you should do what is needed to make it right for you and your family. Most people don’t have time or money to maintain such a garden unfortunately.

Are the owners moving to another house? What about telling them the truth - you can't manage the upkeep but would feel sooo bad sacrificing flower beds to lawn after all their hard work. If not, please put the plants on one of those local websites either free or for pennies and that could also be something to tell the owners if they can't take any themselves. (Nextdoor.co.uk[

I was talking to my daughter yesterday about why people are scared their house is haunted. We agreed why would a dead person have a grudge against the new family who have moved in. I said if someone moves into my house when I'm gone and they pull up all my plants I am going to visit them with a little woooh! Seriously though it would be your house but do not tell them your evil plans.

If you can afford/have time to rip out the plants and replace with lawn, and have time/money for the maintenance of the lawns, you can surely afford/have time to maintain the existing lovely garden. Imho.

It would be a shame but it has to work for you. I'd tell the owners to take what they wanted with them, then keep the rose bed and any old established plants like lilacs, and rhododendrons, anything that takes a long time to get to the size it is but doesn't take too maintenance. Then put a post on local FB gardening page to offer plants if people want to come and collect them

Urban foxes are the equivalent of garbage bears.

The reason the urban ones are probably "thriving" and the rural ones not is probably due to all the rural ones moving into the cities to scavenge on human waste like rats.

If you think wild animals are living their best lives consuming human detritus then fine. My view is that they are best off living in environments closest to their natural ones, even if that means their populations are smaller.

I live in what was my grandmother's house. She spent endless hours in the garden making it beautiful. I don't, I mow the lawns two, maybe three times a year and attack everything else with a hedge trimmer twice a year.

Garden is now full of frogs, toads, slow worms, there have been bumble bee nests and we've had red, black and yellow ants. Last weekend I found a newt for the first time.

It is just a garden, not virgin rainforest!

@Mum2HC It would make me sad if this was my neighbours garden and you moved in and did this, but if you buy the house the garden is yours to do with what you want.
I do have a suggestion. I know you said you can't afford a gardener, but could you afford a one off visit from one to help suggest what you could keep that is low maintenance so you could keep some of the shrubs and other plants and give away the more high maintenance ones. Having shrubs and ground cover that require very little maintenance would actually save you time in the long run as it would help keep down the weeds.
Does the current garden have a lawn of any sort, because if it doesn't maybe they had issues with growing one which is why they have gone border plants heavy.
I will say our kids loved having shrubs and things in our garden when they were growing up. It gave them secret hiding places which they really enjoyed and we have a tree which we placed a climbing frame under and it made it more of an adventure.

I know that isnt the actual garden!
But OP said that was rhe level of garden she is talking about.

In my own garden I leave the moss,(for the same reasons as you and because I love watching the birds collecting it for their nests). I leave long bits too but mow a path through so I can battle my way to my washing line.

Lots of my clients want a 'smarter' looking lawn and aerating and raking for them does the trick. I don't use chemicals at all for myself or my clients. When I see moss remover products on the sheves and think if only people would just do a bit a of raking and aerating they could save themselves money and be a lot kinder on the environment.

yup, I used to have HPR'S and lived with the lounge garden door open for most of the year. I still live with the door open but can no longer have dogs. My lounge floor is mostly covered in wood effect flotex which is pretty much everything proof.

How can you not afford a gardner but can afford to give your garden a radical makeover? You don’t need to turn a gardner into a full time employee, it’s not Kew Gardens. Have someone come round once a month for a couple of hours to keep on top of what is already a well maintained garden.

I'd love to have a mossy lawn but my ground is too dry. I do encourage all manner of wild stuff in my lawn.

I think that the OP (who by the way hasn;t been back) hasn't ANY idea of how much that radical makeover will cost and how much effort the resulting garden will still be.
edit: If it were me and wanted to go low care, I'd plant a wood!

Interesting you say foxes live on human waste like rats.

A fair part of their diet is rats. Also mice, pigeons, worms, beetles, berries and any waste food they can lay their paws on. They're a damn good way of keeping down urban rat and feral pigeon numbers.

Life is almost certainly a lot easier for urban foxes than rural ones. They sustain themselves much better without needing to cover such big areas.

Mature gardens, hedges, parks, old cemeteries and railway embankments are probably as close to their natural environment as they would find anywhere in the UK. Plus the hunt isn't going to rip through any time soon.

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.

What I have found really depressing - and to be honest quite sad - about this thread is the fact that so many people cannot see the problem.

Of course it is understandable that someone might not want a big garden, that isn't hard to comprehend at all.

But what I do find hard to comprehend is that out of a dogged subservience to practicality and a kind of base elevation of the idea of doing what you want regardless, a kind of "no-one can stop you", people think it is fine to just buy whatever house and destroy such a garden. It is a depressing lack of appreciation for things that transcend the everyday hum drum, and for the creation of things that elevate us above mere functioning robots. I get why someone might not want to tend such a garden themselves, but being happy to destroy it is another thing entirely.

I wouldn’t rip it out - the peace and tranquility of sitting in a garden in summer evenings with the gentle thrum of bees and butterflies going about their business is so wonderful. A mature garden is not that hard to maintain. Flowers just pop up every year. They’ve done the hard work. And it’s a big space anyway so you’ll need to be doing some outdoor work. We have a big garden but all I do is cut the lawns, DP does the hedges and we have some veg in pots in one area. The rest is a beautifully wild tangle of established flowers, big shrubs and bushes. It looks lovely. I would live with the garden first before you decide to demolish. You may be a convert

That garden is utterly beautiful. I have to say it looks a lot like my Grandma's garden and growing up in a space like that really was spectacular.

If you could keep it and maintain it with a part time gardener, I'd implore you to. Your kids would love it!

blimey Op - Im actually a campaigner for green spaces in my real life (aka not online life) - and I say do what the hell you want with the garden!

It's going to be your home - people buy and sell land/homes/ gardens - you don't have any moral obligation whatsoever to how people have lived in the house before you!

Yes it would be nice if 'everybody' considered the benefit of a lovely mature garden when caring for their own home and land but = you have no more obligation to do that than anyone else.

as someone who would adore a garden like that and you can’t just buy it (it takes a long time for plants to establish and also figure out what plants like what space/soil in your garden) - it will have been years and years of effort and love.

but gardens are hard work. At the end of the day you could not buy the house and then someone else who buys it may just destroy it anyway.

personally I would be tempted to at least try and keep the garden - and see what happens with some low maintenance. who knows you may enjoy it (perennials that come back every year etc). At least don’t rip it all out immediately and maybe it will be something you actually come round to after getting rid of the more difficult stuff? And think of how much you’d spend on relandscaping it all - surely that’s a few years of gardening paid for?

but if you do put in an offer be honest with the sellers. Make it clear to the sellers you’re happy for them to take any plants. And after moving in, if you don’t want to do a wait and see approach and want to immediately landscape then suggest you can ask around neighbours and others in the area to come and take some plants (I’m sure the gardener may take them off your hands, either free or for small charge if he can sell them onto other clients).

I do think if you’re prepared to put some effort into a vegetable patch an established garden may not be far off but I appreciate it’s your choice/life - but as noted gardens are great for wildlife too and maybe your kids will end up loving it.

But at leat they are planning to still keep on a lot of the original garden. My parents had a huge garden that my mum tended for years, filled with trees, flowers & an amazing hedge full of birds. When the house was sold the garden was razed entirely including the hawthorn hedge. They put some plastic decking down & rest just grass. Faceless & all the wildlife lost.

Somebody else might then buy this house & raze the garden completely.

The seller's are abandoning the gardon before you, for whatever reason. So keep that in mind. You could ask them for care tips if you're willing to try to maintain it for a short time. Do what you need to do!

@Mum2HC that would be a shame but as others said it your garden.
What I will say though is well established gardens do take care of themslves with not too much work. .once it's going like that it wouldn't take much gardening ...to keep it utterly pristine maybe but otherwise no.

Can you compromise keep some loose some ?
Most children love beauty it seeps in.

There are Youtube videos of people pleading with others to not buy up character houses then rip them up and turn the interiors into something more akin to a modern apartment.

I think people who go ‘meh, throw concrete over it, who cares, must lack soul (not in the religious sense). Do people really not care if homes, gardens, architecture go from characterful to bland 🤷‍♀️ Yes we can acknowledge once it’s yours and not listed you can do what you want, but just because you can doesn’t mean you should. I have wisteria that gives me a lot of pleasure each year and I would think it a terrible shame if future owners ripped it out. Not my business of course, but it would still sting to know it was gone.

Is the house so perfect that the garden should be sacrificed or are there other houses you can look at?