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 like roses myself so replacing it with veg sounds good, though I’m surprised you’ll grow veg but not tend a garden!
My neighbours ripped up the lovely garden in front of their house and paved it over to put their three cars on. It was a real shame as we could all see it. They did the same with the back but only I could see it from an upstairs window (and I admit I did judge them)! But your property your choice.

I have found some pictures on the internet of similar gardens - this is the level of flowers I am talking about!

The rose garden is about 10m x 50m 8 lines of roses with paths inbetween

Yeah its still a lot more labour intensive vs a bush or a perennial (many of mine require zero care and are compatible with 2 x small kids and a ft job)

I'd buy the house and get a landscape gardener in you can keep some /many plants and it can be low maintenance.

Id also say if you camt afford a gardener at £100 -150 pm you probably cant afford the ££££ to level and turf it

There is no denying it is absolutely beautiful but we have no idea how to look after it

One of my DHs requirements in looking at a house was a low maintenance garden. His parents are avoid gardeners and from spring to autumn spend all day most days doing garden work. (He also rarely eats veg, as they would have gluts of say, runner beans, and so the kids would munch their way through mountains of whatever was in season).

we bought a low ish maintenance garden, only to find that we both actually enjoy gardening!

Rose gardens are low maintenance. Just use the garden as it suits. Put in turf where you need it, leave other stuff be. Small changes to suit your needs now. We have an inbuilt trampoline but also flower needs that need weeding and maintenance .

As PPs have said, growing vegetables is a hell of a lot of work! An established rose bed is much less hassle, so that’s definitely not a swap to make if you don’t have a lot of time and you don’t like gardening.

My one piece of advice is don’t rush in and start ripping things up before you’ve lived with them for a bit (I’ve always done this with houses too, despite only ever buying fixer-uppers - the ideas you have before you buy a place always change and adjust once you properly understand what you’re dealing with).

If you don’t know much about plants, check which ones will give you the most bang for your buck (established, low to no maintenance, soil/climate appropriate therefore don’t need loads of extra watering etc) before you make any major decisions. This will mean living with the garden for a year and seeing what it does. A lot of the structural shrubs and bushes will more or less mind their own business, and the stuff that’s highly labour intensive will start to shows signs of neglect if you’re not tending to it, so you’ll know those are things you need to move on to new homes.

Definitely offer established plants to other gardeners via freecycle and FB - you’ll have no trouble getting rid.

At the end of the day you need to create the space that works for your family, but in your situation I’d be trying to end up with a garden that’s still beautiful and established as well as practical. Lawn is great for kids, but is almost moribund when it comes to supporting wildlife and the environment, and still requires maintenance.

I can see this happening go my Dads garden in 10 years or so. Its got lovely mature shrubs and roses, a massive vegetable garden etc.

I also remember it growing up... with the lawn about three times kmits current size, a lot smaller vegetable patch... and a climbing frame, a path I learnt to skate on, the rabbit hutch my dad built himself (and I cringe at now as i know it was really too small and rabbits need a companion).

The front garden was paved a few years ago (necessity for disabled parking).

It becoming a family home with small children will be the circle of life.

(The previous owners of our house were appalled we removed the hedges from our back garden... they were hideous and blocked out all the natural light)

They can take them if they want

People are being ridiculous about this! In the same way that you are not under any obligation to keep their interior decor or their kitchen however beautiful it is, nor are you required to keep their garden if it doesn’t meet the needs of your family. If the house is otherwise perfect, of course you should make an offer on it and then change the garden to suit your own needs. Children and family are far more important than plants!

This slightly reminds me of the time we viewed a Victorian house where the owners had ripped out all the original features and decorated to their own eclectic tastes. Not only were they planning on leaving their hideous nylon carpets, they were also insisting on replacing one particularly vile neon pink nylon one in the bedroom before the sale went through. They were extremely offended when we said that if we made an offer we would be replacing all the carpets so they should not put themselves to that expense. In the end we didn’t offer because the costs of reversing all of their renovations would just have been too much.

Please give it a full year as it is. There's a strong chance that you will get a lot of pleasure from it and a lot of this kind of planting looks after itself.

Young children can get a lot of pleasure out of this kind of garden - corners to hide in, playing with toys among flowerbeds, finding caterpillars. You'll get lots of birds too

And you'll have a beautiful space to come out to at the end of the day for a bit of decompression.

Lawns and vegetable gardens can be a lot of work compared to established planting. Give it a year and see how you feel.

Get the kids involved with the gardening, they'll love it!
It doesn't matter if it's not perfectly maintained but add a hedgehog house, bird bath and a few bug hotels along side popping some easy veg (green beans, radishes, courgettes) and you will have happy kids learning all about nature, seasons, science and proudly bringing you tomatoes and lettuce for tea!

Please buy another house, it would be wrong to destroy something so beautiful - similar to destroying a precious work of art. As someone has said above, this is not the house for you - will you find it as appealing if the garden is gone?

They've had their time with the garden. It's now yours, to garden as you wish. However, it seems a bit daft to bin a perfectly good garden. Gardening is not like interior design; you can re-paint a room in an afternoon but a garden takes a long, long time to establish. It would take years to re-instate if you decided it was a mistake. As others have said, take it slowly and learn what does/doesn't work for you.

You mentioned "keeping the flowers in check" but if we are talking perennials then they do that themselves. Fill the garden with things that are low maintenance e.g. shrubs and perennials.
But just remember that there is no such thing as a no-maintenance garden.

ETA: the best gardens are about design, not plants. Get your design right. There are loads of resources on TV and YouTube.

Buy a different house.

We would if there was one for sale in the right location 🙄

Could you advertise for a retired person who is interested in gardening who is looking for something to do in their spare time as a hobby to get them out and about.

What beautiful gardens. They're an absolute joy.
Anyway - your property, your choice.

Go for it. You don’t want someone else’s garden, you want what suits you.

Can it really be the house for you if you are looking to destroy the well looked after and loved garden?

Yes, you'd be within your rights to pummel it into the ground if you buy it. I just wouldn't be able to sleep at night myself. I'd see it as bad karma. Perhaps not rational but you asked and that's my honest opinion.

Also: veg patches are far more work than established ornamentals.

We couldn't afford a gardener, but got an odd job man who comes every once in a while to mow, weed and tidy up. Not expensive. You could check locally?

@Mum2HC we have similar, a beautiful garden that was, in the early 1930's professionally landscaped. We put a lot into it personally and pay a gardener £800 pcm to assist from March to November. It is remarkable and we enjoy it enormously. It is a labour of love.

If and when we sell the house, we won't own it, the new owners will. They will have complete agency over what they do or do not do to the house and garden. Their money will be in our bank and the transaction will be concluded.

When we left.our old house, after 24 years, the house where the children grew up, I thought I would be very emotional. Once the pictures were off the walls, the photographs and belongings packed up, it was the housee we had sold. The home was in the van and in our hearts.

Can’t you just find a different house? I know you can do what you want once it’s yours, but for me it deserves a different owner. It’s no different to people turning a beautiful character house into a McMansion.

Yeesh I can hardly bear to think about this, but…

If you love the house I wouldn’t completely discount making the garden much easier to look after. But I would live with it for a bit. I have a large garden which I love and very little time to work on it. What works for me is:

• no dig gardening (basically a weed membrane on beds topped up with mulch once a year)
• letting high-maintenance plants die of the their own accord and replacing with hardy/ low maintenance stuff (roses for example take barely any ongoing looking after IME, just prune once a year and possibly occasionally deal with greenfly)
• Concentrate efforts close to the house and let the other bits go a bit wild.
• Get a good lawnmower.

In your case having a lot of plants could actually mean that the garden is low maintenance because having full beds means there’s less space for weeds.

So in summary I would consider buying the house, live with the garden and see how you get on. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to let it go a bit at all and you may find that it’s less work than you think.

Don’t try to re-lawn or plant veg where roses have been growing though, ironically both of those things would be very high maintenance and established roses are so easy! If you want a veg bed use one of the borders!

The vast majority of people would not have the time, money or skill to maintain the garden you describe. So if you don’t buy it, there is a high chance that the people who do buy it will either remodel it or let it go to seed to some degree. So, as sad as it is, I wouldn’t let it stop me. I’d go for it. And don’t tell the people selling that you won’t be maintaining it or they could turn down your offer on that basis.

In my last property, whilst the garden wasn’t in ‘National Trust’ property league, I had planted lots of lovely shrubs and flowers, and had new beds installed. When I went back to collect some post, I saw that the new owner had ripped out all the beds and plants for more ‘hard standing’, it looked hideous. I wasn’t upset as such, it’s their house now, but I wish they had said they wanted to do this, as I would have taken some of the plants with me. Perhaps as others have said, give them this option. But it does seem like it’s not the right property for you.