Garden red flags?

[Mt563]

I'm looking at house to buy. A big draw is the garden. It's long, relatively narrow and slightly sloped, good views. It's faces northwest but is only overlooked by the house so most of the garden gets plenty of sun most of the day. It's currently just lawn end terrace so not much to go off.

Is there anything I should look out for that would make it a difficult garden to grow things in or any red flags I'm ignoring?

I know some would want to terrace the slope. I think we'll be OK without.

There is a patch of brambles at the bottom needs clearing.

There were previously a few small trees which the current owner seems to have removed.

I'd like to grow veg/fruit, some wildflowers, some grass for kids play, there's a terrace for seating/ eating.

Sounds similar to our garden and I do manage to grow some veg although the garden nearest the house is pretty much unusable for anything other than lawn or shade loving plants.

Check the soil! We are on heavy clay and everything struggles. So wet you can't even walk on it in winter and bakes solid in summer. I have lost a fortune in plants I have planted and have died.

Clay soil is the 'kiss of death' to most plants. If you have clay soil you need to 'work' it and that can take years.
I lived somewhere once with a clay soils and DH spent hours double-digging every autumn and adding organic material, It was just getting to be a useful planting area when we got divorced - ah well 🙄

we have the same problem but with added builders rubble buried very deep. I grow moisture loving plants now or bog plants they seem to like it!

Depends on how much slope , I previously had a terraced garden and when it came to sell it no one wanted the effort of steps up the terraces

There are loads of plants that are very happy on clay! I garden on heavy clay, water pools on the surface in heavy rain and it cracks in the summer, and that's after 30 years here.

But I have a garden full of fantastic plants, you just have to know which ones thrive in clay. If they don't then grow in pots e g. I grow things like lavender, salvias, rosemary and agapanthus in pots as they'd die in the ground.

Access to it especially if you might want to put steps in and need diggers to get round there. My first house was a terrace and all garden stuff had to go through the house which was a pain. I would always want a decent path, minimum of wheelbarrow width preferably car width (in case you want to put in steps later and need a digger plus it's handy for unloading bags of compost etc) access now.

Outside tap - again my first house had the kitchen at the front and bathroom in the middle upstairs so no source of water at the back of the house I had to run a hose all the way through from the kitchen tap if I needed one. Otherwise are there downpipes you can put water butts on.

It's a good idea if there are front gardens to have a look at what everyone else has growing, are they full of a good variety of plants in the ground and thriving (good sign) or has everyone got gravel and pots (possible sign of poor soil).

I love a long northish facing garden. You can have a shady seeing area right next to the house which will be in shade most of the time, perfect for being able to use the garden in a heatwave, and it'll get the morning /evening sun. And then a sunny seating area at the far end too

I'd watch out for large conifer trees and hedges, anything that's going to sap moisturise and nutrients from your soil. Also get on top of the brambles and any ivy, marestail, bind weed... Anything invasive, before you do anything.

My garden red flag would be horsetail. Anything else you can probably get rid of if you are persiatant but horsetail is indestructible.

Nothing wrong with clay. With the state of the purchasable compost (no peat) these days - clay is one of the only moisture retentive soils left. Just topdress with bracken mulch and it will be soil to envy.

I have that where I am now.

The only way to deal with it is to manually remove it and pull up as much root where you can.

Apparently the roots go down 6 feet !

Horsetail is bloody awful.

Thanks everyone! Food for thought. I've had clay at an allotment before, lots of compost and organic materials plus a few planting of potatoes helped a lot to break up and enrich the soil.

Thinking terrace near house for sitting/ eating, lawn middle for kids and flowers/ fruit/veg at bottom with a bench.

Look at the fence panels on all sides to gauge how old they are and whether they match, as that would be an indication of how windy the garden is. A rag-tag ensemble of mismatched ones is a clear indication that you have a windy garden.😁

But I would take horse-tail over nettles and thistles any day.

The roots of thistles are about as think as my fingers and need seriously digging out - then they come back when you're not looking !
Nettles, of course, sting you and you're itching for 24 hours. The roots aren't as problematic though.

At least horse-tail has thin runners and can be pulled out easily.

Bamboo. Knotweed.
New build garden!

Even if it is clay you can grow your own in raised beds. All gardens have plusses and minuses.

That's a great tip! They're all old and in need of replacing but look of a similar age throughout.

It sounds delightful, I actually love a slopey garden, reminds me of rolling hills and for some reason I find that idea lovely.

A lot of plants are in active growing season now so for the troublesome ones - like bamboo - I’d be looking for freshly dug borders on viewing, or mulched areas, which could be hiding issues. If the clay soil just looks solid I’d be thinking I could get some of that soil improver - begins with a ‘g’ I think? It breaks it down and adds nutrients, and you water it in. It’s on my list for next year as I’ve an area under tree in back garden which is like concrete!

Bamboo is one of my biggest worries in the garden though (I have it in pots thankfully and tilt it twice a year to make sure it isn’t coming out the bottom!)

Depends on the type of bamboo - there are a lot of ornamental varieties which don’t have the spreading habit of “original” varieties.

As a previous poster said, clay soil is not a disaster. We have raised beds and grow all sorts in there. Out the front, we have a some very happy roses and a too-happy magnolia bush!

You can always work with what you have.

Our garden is similar, only the soil is chalk. We also have a wildflower garden. We made this by peeling back an area of lawn about halfway down the slope and sowing it with seeds recommended by MeadowMania for our specific soil. We had to cover it with strings and use an owl bird scarer to keep the birds off until the seeds started sprouting, but otherwise no major care other the occasional annual mow. It's still going 15 years later!

We've got clumping bamboo (fargesia), and it hasn't spread in 20 years. I think it's called 'Jumbo'.

I think it’s far more common to have a sloping garden than not to.

None of these would be deal breakers to me, but ideally I’d be looking for: outside tap, access (if I was ever thinking of doing any hard landscaping or introducing mature shrubs or trees), presence of invasive weeds like green alkanet, who owns the boundary and it’s therefore responsible for maintaining it and the state of their garden and property, to gauge whether they’re likely to be willing to spend money doing that.

Our garden faces north west and has plenty of sun as it’s very open, and the gardens and houses to either side and behind ours aren’t built up. I’d trying to introduce more shade.

Horsetail and knotweed would be an absolute deal breaker.