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!!

ummm the title?

I agree. Our garden isn’t quite at the same standard, but is almost 200’ and has been improved and maintained for nearly 35 years, and is stunning. We’re in the process of moving and I told our estate agents to ask what prospective buyers planned to do to the house and, more importantly, the garden, at the point where they made offers. We wouldn’t have accepted an offer from anyone who had said they were planning to vandalise our lovely Victorian house by making it open plan and adding a square box extension to the back or who wouldn’t want to maintain our lovely garden. I know people can lie and change their minds but the offer we accepted was from people who just wanted to renovate the house and who appreciate the work that has gone into making our garden beautiful.

It very much reminds me of the thread on here where someone had done similar to a mid-century bungalow and wondered why it wasn't selling...

Same. I seem to remember a lovely established garden had been vandalised there too.

I feel enraged just reading all that! 😩

How did you learn to garden?
Did it involve making mistakes?
Killing plants?
Starting with projects that on the surfaces seem like the sensisble/ easier option like growing your own veg or growing annuals, but in reality aren't?
Appalingly badly thought out planting plans and combinations?
Overcrowded borders?

Or were you born with an encyclopeadic horticultural knowledge?

I grew up with a grandmother, who was nasty and judgy but a phemonenal gardener, who look down on Monty Don because he wasn't RHS trained, FFS.

I've taught myself through reading books, watching TV, experimenting in my own garden (and failing) and working alongside my chelsea gold medal winning friend.

That garden is your friends property and his project, and his alone. As will be OP garden if she purchases this property. She may learn to love it and become an avid gardener and custodian of what is already there, she may bulldoze it and turn it in to a 'boring' non descript grass and grey garden, or she may bulldoze it and come back to it later when the kids are older and create something truely magical, of her own imagination and of this time, not a museum piece!

You don't sound like a very nice friend.

Of course it would be a shame to do what you plan. But consider this - you pass on this otherwise perfect house because you don’t want to spoil the garden. It is then bought by someone else, who goes on to do precisely that. How would you feel then?

Response to Periperi2025

Get you and your hiked up judgey pants! Methinks you may have done some enshittification of your own due to your ranty and lengthy response full of quite extreme ideas about me, gardening and if I'm a nice friend or not.

I was extremely ignorant of gardening when I moved into my house. But what I didn't do is rip it all out and then moan it looked shit. What I did do is take the advice of my friends and family and left it alone for a year to see what came up and what needed replacing, changing or leaving well alone. Thank god I did, because it was very much a garden that came into life from spring onwards. I have spent thousands on plants for my garden since then and not all of them survived. It has been an entirely enjoyable experience, despite some very expensive losses over the years - all of them due to my ignorance. I've bought books, quizzed established gardeners, chatted with experts: I have learned loads. I have even spoken to Monty Don himself, who is lovely. Shame your mum didn't like him.

My garden is my pride and joy and I still make mistakes with plants. But that's the fun of gardening. My mum has an acre of incredible garden and she's still fucking up... it happens.

Funnily enough, I'm a very good friend. But if you instafuck your home or garden, I'm going to tell you about it. I'm honest like that. And I did tell my mate he was an idiot for pulling up really good plants. Because he's not a twat, he was horrified that he'd not checked and learned even a small bit about gardening before ripping out what he thought were weeds and long grass.

What have you got against roses? They are one of the plants that require very little maintenance- prune once a year and they are naturally gorgeous for months… you want to replace them with a veg patch?? 🤣 have you ever tried maintaining one? We did for few years during lockdown, it’s super high maintenance, and need watering twice a day in the heights of summer. So if you are away you will need someone to pop round and water them, check them… We dropped it eventually as work and family commitments were too much.
Please don’t destroy that garden, it’s a peace of sheet beauty 😍

You do understand that that is not the actual garden? What I have got against bastard roses is bastard thorns and bastard black spot. But I have got some.

I would make the garden to suit you and your requirements. Easy to take on board what you think of the current owners devastation, but what they don't see won't hurt. In the past I've ripped out previous people's gardens, to the devastation of spectators but they've eaten their hats at what I've created. However, I take on board very much your dilemma, of your limitations as to time and desire to your needs. Extend the lawn to how you want it and gradually push back the borders as you think fit. You, and only you have to maintain it, so do what you want. It will be your garden and your burden if you allow other people's opinions who don't, won't, or cannot afford to maintain it as is, to sway your decision.

I would love borders like those but I would absolutely create space for a lawn. It's a garden not a museum.

The garden sounds absolutely beautiful. Also, remember that your kids won't be at the stage where they want to play football in the garden forever. You might regret changing the garden in future years.

A better solution would be, instead of changing the garden, to change yourselves! Turn yourselves into gardeners. Learn about plants and nature - it's so interesting - and gardening is a very healthy thing to do. Fresh air and exercise.

Anyway, the garden is all there and ready for you. All you have to do is maintain!

It's your house. It's your garden. Definitely don't tell the owners before contracts exchange. Tell them afterwards in case they want to transfer anything.

It’s beautiful, buy a different house.

If you don't buy it and some else does and they take out the garden you are going to be very disappointed that you did not buy it.

Please don’t buy the house, it would be criminal to rip out that garden.

Buy another house. There will be other people who will be delighted to have such a wonderful garden, and will cherish it. As someone who inherited the garden that my mother lovingly created (she particularly loved roses, like the owners of the house you wish to buy and some of them have moved twice from our childhood home) and is now a gardener, your notion of ripping up half of it and replacing with lawn feels me with horror. Also, there is likely to be an environmental cost to the kinds of destruction remodelling that you'd want to do as the kind of existing planting that you describe is likely a very good environment for wildlife whereas lawn (which you presumably will mow regularly) will not be.

I sound critical, I know, but I'm absolutely heartsick at the spectacle one sees everywhere in the UK of lovely gardens that have been ripped out and replaced by hard paving, fire pits, etc. It looks hideous and is terrible for the environment. I'm sorry but your message triggered me! I disagree with those people who say that if it's your house you can do what you like; we are custodians of our houses and gardens, which will be passed on to others. The National Trust was founded precisely to prevent this kind of thing happening, and not all their properties are grand.

I work full time with 2 kids and a busy life. I love my garden and would adore having a garden like that. It’s established so I think if you buy it please wait a year and just see what naturally comes back that really you won’t need to maintain - just trim back and shove trimmings in a composting bin. Gardens provide so much peace and tranquility and are fabulous for tired wired brains and for overstimulated teenagers or toddlers who want to help dig. Please think how lucky you are to have been given such an amazing gift. What you are seeing as a huge chore is in fact a path to winding down from work , being in nature and outdoors and listening to nature. It’s the opposite of what you perceive it to be. It’s a way of becoming more present . You can also sit in it during the summer months admiring its beauty and sip rose with your friends . As I’ve got older and my kids are now young adults my friends and I absolutely adore our gardens and swapping plants and visiting each others and getting ideas/ cuttings/ sharing vegetables etc. roses ate VERY low maintenance and very beautiful. Please have a long think first. It’s your house but it’s also a lifestyle you could discover that adds huge value rather than an onerous chore . It’s how you look at it.

for the nth time, that is not the actual garden

Plants like that are expensive

Could you not keep the borders and have a practical lawn in the middle? Established borders are pretty easy to maintain and look much better than just fence.