Don't look at your old house on Google Earth

Out of curiosity, I had a look at my first house on Google Maps. I spent 6 years there turning a patch of dead clay into a beautiful, fairly mature garden. It added at least £20k to the house when we sold it, compared to the ex council houses around us.

One of the main things was a wisteria. The garden had walls on two sides, with our back wall and a blank wall from the neighbours. I'd trained a Japanese wisteria macrobotrys up our wall on straining wires, to turn the feel from a council house yard into a small cottage garden. And I reseeded the small lawn, as a backdrop to the planting. Everything was low maintenance, so a couple of days a year pruning was all it needed. The last year we were there, I barely had to do anything beyond mowing and a little weeding.

That was about 14 years ago, and I've not been back. I've just looked on Google Earth, and it's heartbreaking. The wisteria has been cut down, the lawn is destroyed, and it's all back to looking like a chavvy dump again.

To be completely fair, we ripped the soul out of my current place when we had to cut down the overgrown cypress hedge around the back, to put up a proper fence. This place was always going to be a work in progress, considering the state of it when I bought it. And I've no argument with people who simply decide they prefer different plants. But if you're starting with something that's already beautiful, nailed, and low maintenance, why break it?

Has anyone else had this with their old gardens?

 

Hi @Graham B that's heartbreaking I've often wondered why anyone would buy a house with a beautiful garden and not maintain it or at least not destroy it. I understand it won't be to everyone's taste and people will want to change things but to look back and find it's a dump it awful.

 

I'm sure when I go my my garden, and allotment will be full of the sound of chainsaws.

Nobody will want what I have, I even envisage the pond being filled in, probably with the fish and frogs still in it.

 

Oh that's really, really sad. It's one of the reasons I struggle so much with the thought of ever moving, when you've put so much love and heart and soul into a garden, and attracted precious wildlife, the thought of it all being destroyed is just unbearable.

 

Hey @Graham B , thanks I had a look at my childhood paradise, a large plot lovingly cultivated by my grandparents and later on, by me. Full of flowers, true cottage style where you have to weave your way past the flowers on the narrow paths, a riot of colours with veg tucked in...



This is just naturally gone to wilderness, it must be much worse when someone intentionally dismantles what used to be beautiful.

Then again, many people just want the outdoor space for the trampoline, bbq and perhaps some summer bedding and think that bare walls and concrete are low maintenance.

Each to their own I guess. On a positive note, the Covid situation has awaken many people to taking a hard look at their gardens and to take plunges into learning on how to move away from low maintenance concrete towards a bit of a green space. It's definitely happening just now.

 

I'd just like to add that leaving a beautiful garden behind can sometimes inspire others. We have a communal garden of 11 flats looked after by one couple until they moved on. They made sure we all had a shed key and left the shed, tools and the hedge trimmer. Various people started to weed etc but it was chaos with some planting and some thinking they were weeds pulling them up! Gradually they lost interest. Didn't have the 'time' and I have gradually introduced flowers which it lacked and made it my own . It's been lovely over the summer lockdown for all to enjoy. The people that left the shed and tools and mature plants and trees gave us all the potential and me the gardening bug.

 

Selleri. Nice comment.

 

I've had this discussion a few times recently. It's all a matter of personal taste. If a family of non gardeners move in to your old house, then so be it.
Let the kids have their trampoline and football net because it's not your place any more.
It looks like that in a couple of years we are going to have to relocate because of her health, if I can dig plants up I will but I won't lose too much sleep if palms I grew from seed get razed.
It's the same as the inside of a house. The new owners probably want to re decorate, it's their choice.
People spend way too much time reminiscing, instead of enjoying the mystery of the future

 

I've looked up all 3 of my childhood homes in the past, Blackpool, Nottingham and the first house we lived in down here. I was pleased to see the gardens were very similar to how I remembered them to be and that all 3 ponds that my parents created were still in place.

 

In many ways I agree @flounder ...but for me things are still way too raw with having to close up and sell my parent's property, completion was only a fortnight ago. They have gone....the family home of 50 years had gone...the future with them has gone. Nothing wrong with looking back and reminiscing and recalling happy times with loved ones in what had been a loving and happy family home.

 

It can certainly be a shock to see what happens to a garden when someone else takes it over - what you prized can be decimated almost in the blink of an eye.
Trouble is, would anyone refuse an offer on their house simply because they suspected the prospective buyer wasn't too keen on upkeeping the garden ? I'd imagine the average property owner is not really in the position to be that picky.
Having moved house numerous times both in the UK and in mainland Europe and creating gardens each time, I had the opportunity to re visit some of them years later. I vowed never to do so again - so, yes, in many cases it is best to remember "your" garden as you left it and look forward rather than back.
As said above - if the Covid pandemic has driven a lot of people to distraction, it has also made many non gardeners look twice at their green space and decide gardening may well be quite a good idea

 

I agree with everyone that when it stops being my house, it's their call what they do.

The garden was a part of what pushed the value of the house way up when I sold it though. I don't get why people would destroy value.

Still, like Selleri's old garden, at least having been well tended in the past, the soil will be in a good condition for when someone does decide to do something with it again.

 

And now tnat we have digital cameras, we can revisit gardens without leaving our own hard drive

 

The family who bought our house fell for the garden.
Now 15 yrs later the garden is exactly the same .
They have
Even kept the hard standing where my greenhouse stood.we took this with us as id have been lost without it.
But to take away the ugliness of the bare concrete we covered the base in gravel bought several large pots ,planted up and arranged these to take the hardness off.

I've googled our old garden several times and nothing has changed..

 

That is good Purple Streaks. I can't look back as such. I moved in here in May 1964. Hell's Bells. 1964. 1066 1641. That was another age.

Purple Streaks. Nice to see you posting again.xx