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!!

Just do what you want it’ll be your house

That's mad. Personally I would keep a beautiful rose garden as although it's work, it's not the heavy slash and burn work some gardens (mine) have - my home is an ex council property and for some unknown reason leylandii was planted in - I have spent the last 20 years fighting it, plus cutting back the overgrown forest encroaching on my garden from scrubland at the back. I would love a ready made garden to learn about and maintain! But not everyone would.

If you’re not informed about gardens, it might be an idea to ask the owners for a bit of information to help you. For all you know, loads of the plants might be low maintenance, self care type of things. If they are older people, this is quite likely. Anyone we know who is 60+ is making changes to their garden so it takes less care. Armed with the information from the sellers, you could then remove any high maintenance stuff and allow the easy things to spread out. Grass is nice for kids to play on, and over time you can throw down handfuls of the sort of seeds which are used on sports pitches, so that the grass becomes a bit tougher too.

I agree with the poster who said getting rid of how the garden is, is a form of vandalism.

Yes you can do what you want to your own house or garden.
However I think it's a shame as so many established gardens that provide wildlife, food for other animals i.e slugs, insects etc are being up either paved over, turned into monoculture lawns so that our wildlife suffers. Then people moan because hedgehogs and small garden birds are heading towards extinction.

If you buy the house it’s yours to do as you see fit and even if you don’t buy it someone else will and might rip out the garden and replace with shingle gravel. Horses for courses and all that.

Do as you like with it, but maybe advertise the plants on local sites, they will get a new home for someone who needs them!

I'd echo the comments of those that say vegetables are much harder work than roses!! You are not being unreasonable in wanting to make the garden work for you, but I think you are being a little unreasonable in diving straight in to rip it out.

I think I would say nothing during the purchase, then meet the gardener once you have moved in and explain that what you want is a much lower maintenance but still attractive (assuming that is what you want) garden, and what do they suggest to achieve that. Then, over a period of time if necessary, pay them to help you do that.

We have a similar sized garden but its almost all wild. It still has massive, massive upkeep. I'd get a house with a smaller garden.

Oooh please may I ask the name of it so I can snoop on Google earth? 👀

😂They are having a sunken seating are surrounded by 'native flowers for wildlife'

It really is.

Heartbreaking?

Emotional devastation?

That seems over the top. My grandparents were keen gardeners. When they sold their house with beautiful garden, the new owners split the garden in half and sold the bottom half as a building plot for a brand-new house. I was fine with that

Massive climbing frame, tennis court, garden room.

You'd need to budget upwards of £80,000 for this.

It’s breaking my heart.

It wasn’t your garden, though. I wonder how your grandparents felt?

Just to add. Don’t walk away from this because of the garden. There is no guarantee that the person who comes after you to offer and buy won’t level that garden (or even divide the plot in two and sell the other half to a developer), so don’t let anyone here guilt you into thinking that you not buying it will save it… it won’t.

My advice is just not to panic and rush in to level it. Take your time. Even if you only opt to keep half of it as is, it will still be worth it to the sellers.

Some people just don't have that sentiment.

I'm with you: it's heart-breaking.

It's also in a sense destruction of heritage. Bland lawns are a dime a dozen all around the world. That is an English Cottage garden of the type you only see in the UK and maybe a handful of Commonwealth countries like Canada or New Zealand and possibly the occasional example in some states of America.

But let's rip them all up and sit on our ready-lawn and concrete paving from Wickes in our lycra scrunch-bums and think how good we look with our latest botox top-ups. Nice.

I just find it sad how so-called practicality is destroying culture in every direction.

I genuinely wouldn’t give it a second thought, we took all the plants and flowers out of our garden and just have grass and a few trees for screening as we’re not gardeners and have no interest in becoming them. Very low maintenance and we can keep it tidy.

I’d offer to let the owners take any plants or shrubs they want but otherwise, no way would it put me off buying the house!

I've put so much work into my garden, but I know that as soon as we sell it the front garden (it's cottage garden style with established trees) will be ripped out for a parking bay. It may be a while till I'll be able to drive past it.

A friend had the most beautiful garden, small but just delightful and sold it to an older lady who loved the house and garden. She went into a home and I drove past it yesterday - all the garden has gone and been grey paving stoned over.

Anyway practically speaking - even if you take out most of the beds you'll spend a long time mowing - (which I think is very dull - at least with flowers they are pretty). See if you can arrange it so that a robot mower can do the work for you - it'll help if it's fairly flat.

Trees are expensive to maintain once they get a bit old as our boundary fences. Tall established hedges take a lot of trimming - do you have the time and money for that?

If you don't like gardening, surely it would be better to wait until a house comes up with a much smaller garden. Even a garden without beds takes a lot of looking after.

I agree it sounds an awful thing to do.

If real, then offer the plants rather than junk them..if not just to the current owners then to gardening groups in the community.

I would seriously love a garden like that, but I do appreciate it's a lot of work.

I wouldn't get rid of the whole thing straight away. Start by adding a smaller turfed area (or extending it if there's one already there) for the kids sport and leave the rest for at least a year. Don't make any big and unchangeable decisions until you've lived with it for a while.

As an aside, if this is the kind of area (village?) where people stay a long time then you can guarantee all your neighbours will be up in arms about the buyers who ripped out Bob and Sue's precious garden they spent half their lives creating. Being a pariah isn't how you want to start off in your new home!

I agree with this. Explain about kids wantimg to have more lawn area for garden toys/football/summer paddling pool.

Would they want to empty the garden of plants they want to take. Similar to them taking their furniture from the house, they takr their plants from the garden. It can be done.

I'm not sure you realise how much work you would be creating by doing this. A wildflower meadow is a lot of work. Far, far more so than an established garden with no bare earth and full of perennials.

OP when we were house hunting we looked at a beautiful house with a garden which sounds similar to the one you describe. We were at the time in our early/mid thirties with two very small children. DH outright refused to buy the house on the basis that the garden was far too much work. It was full of perennials and there was hardly any bare earth in sight.

We bought our current house instead. At the time it was mainly semi wooded meadow with a very small amount of planting close to the house (things like rhododendron and camellias with a few geranium covered areas underneath the shrubs.). Very small as a proportion of the land.

Mowing the lawn took him far more time than tending the planted areas ever did. They literally looked after themselves and it was only when one summer he decided to pull out all the geranium cover leaving masses of bare soil that the weeds really took root. That one act created a lot of work for years.

Our kids played football on the lawn for a few years. Once they got to secondary school stage they were no longer interested and by then I had become very interested in the garden looking beautiful. I have spent the past ten years or so trying to create an established garden look. I have spent thousands on plants and I'm still not there. Plants take a long time to grow and to create the sort of repetition and flow that those photos show (appreciate they're not the exact garden), is an expensive undertaking.

Buy the house and leave the garden. It's a significant asset and will bring you great joy. Mature gardens do not need a lot of upkeep. Creating one from scratch costs a lot of money.