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!!

Tell that to the hedgehogs, birds, frogs, newts, slow worms, bees, butterflies etc that might live there.

I'd be gutted if someone ripped out our garden because we have all of the above. I don't spend all day gardening though, I let the grass get long and have meadow flowers like ox eye daisies, knapweed, scabious wild carrot and yarrow growing through it (some planted by me). The hedges get cut once or twice a year.

By far the most work is the vegetable patch, everything literally everything wants to eat what you grow - particularly the pigeons and slugs. Everything has to be carefully watered, fed and looked after. The weeds grow 100 times faster than anything you plant. Please don't think a vegetable garden is something that doesn't take much work.

I wouldn't buy this house and rip out the garden, I think that would be an awful thing to do personally.

I think this is true about what the neighbours will think, ( which may or may not be a concern to the eventual buyers). Neighbours to this place most likely would feel entitled to their view on this garden if it truly is this beautiful, - even though it isn't theirs!

You only need to file a planning application ( as we did at this place), and you find out pretty fast what your neighbours somehow held close to their hearts about your own property.

OP I totally agree with the poster you are replying to, think very, very carefully about how much of a millstone this garden could be for you.

We sold up after 4/5 years in a house with a garden only slightly larger, in significant part because of the pressure of the upkeep - and that was with minimal actual gardening, more just the sheer scale of all tasks, not to mention expense of tree maintenance if that’s relevant, and similarly we couldn’t afford a gardener beyond the odd one off.

This could be a very poor decision.

its not the ACTUAL garden

FWIW, OP, I'm a keen gardener. Mine is closer to the mature, well-stocked, plant-focused NT-style than the family-style, football & BBQ garden. You aren't being unreasonable to want a garden that works best for your family. The existing space can almost certainly be reworked to accommodate the football lawn, reduce your time commitments, and keep pockets of mature plants in situ for biodiversity reasons. There's definitely a happy medium between time/skill/labour-intensive NT-style plant-focused gardens and monoculture deserts.

Gardens by their very nature are ever-changing, adapting to the world around them and the needs, and tastes of the people who use and enjoy them.

Such a shame for the wildlife living in that garden. A lot of those plants are perennial and actually just need dead-heading and trimming now and again. You could teach your children a lot about nature in that garden.

I love gardening but it is hard work keeping it all up.

what I would do is employ someone to work out what is best to keep, and what you can get rid of (offer to others) and how best to have a garden you can enjoy at lower effort. For example I find roses hard work and don’t enjoy them. But I have some shrubs which are very little work, good for insects, and robust enough to have footballs kicked at them.

good luck OP!

Yes, thank you for articulating this so well.

Sorry it's impossible to keep up with this thread especially with the ridiculous comments like this one!

Thank you to the people who have made sensible suggestions, food for thought!

Thank you, a great response. This is what we would plan to do, a happy medium. Keep the borders but take out the middle and but grass down.

I mean if you’d asked whether it was reasonable to slightly modify a beautiful garden and keep large parts of it, rather than “rip it out” this might have been a very different thread 🤦🏼‍♀️

I mean if you’d asked whether it was reasonable to slightly modify a beautiful garden and keep large parts of it, rather than “rip it out” this might have been a very different thread

Exactly. Why do OPs do this? Are they deliberately baiting people? (See also the eviction/niece thread where it turns out the OP has offered the tenants another bigger house for less rent rather than just making them homeless.) So frustrating.

What are you talking about?!!

My OP - "Would it be awful to take out half the gardens flowers and replace with grass?" Note the word HALF

AIBU to rip out a beautiful garden in potential house?

That's your title!

Read the post!

So the title is irrelevant to the post? It's just there to draw people into the thread?

Yes, and add to that the fact that no-one in their right mind would really look at a garden of the scale and type the posted pics were of and think "Oh the house works but the garden'll have to go."

You have to organise the garden to suit yourselves and your DC. Of course they want to be able to play, and without worrying about damaging plants with a ball. I say this as an avid gardener. I'm envious!