The house had been rented out for well over a century and had then been left empty for some months, so the garden was knee-high tussocky grass full of buttercups and dandelions (it was very pretty, in its own way). There was a very large, dusty, prickly holly bush and an enthusiastic yukka, a Christmas tree someone had planted, two very old roses, and some crocosmia. The fences were all falling inwards and reinforced with an attractive mixture of corrugated iron and asbestos. There was also a delightful asbestos-clad lean-to set up, askew, in the middle, and a nearly-decrepit oil tank in a conspicuous position.
Once I dug into it I discovered most of what I'd taken to be lawn was in fact builders' rubble and Victorian rubbish dump, plus the foundations of what used to be outdoor privies, over which grass had gradually grown. In what had at some point (maybe about 30-40 years back) been two narrow flowerbeds, there were copious quantities of dog bones (both bones for dogs and bones of dogs), broken glass, and a large proportion of a sheep's skeleton.
I know from old maps that there was a well there somewhere (never found it). There was also a truly heinous dirty-peach chaenomeles, which had grown right through the house walls.
On the plus side, there were also owls, newts, frogs, toads, loads of birds, wild orchids, and wild flowers.