In article
,
" wrote:
Hi everybody,
We live near the downtown of Green Bay, Wisconsin, though actually,
it's an old "suburb." Back in the 1920's, the lots were platted as
"farmettes" 50' wide and 250' deep, the idea being that everyone would
have a produce garden.
Over the years most people eventually converted their yards to nothing
but lawn, but when we purchased the home 20 years ago, we decided to
convert half of the backyard to an urban habitat with natural
landscaping. The result has been not only a lovely wooded and secluded
lot full of flowers from early spring through fall, but we haven't
needed to water or use any chemicals. What little lawn we have
(because we've kept it mowed away from neighbors' properties) is only
a 30 minute task with a reel mower.
The problem is, we now have the home up for sale and what to us has
been an asset is a liability in the eyes of prospective buyers! They
want us to knock off thousands of dollars from our asking price for
their cost of "cutting down those trees and clearing out all those
weeds in back." They want the big rectangular lawn.
Has anyone else experienced this situation and if so, what did you
do? Are there any networks we could plug into where we might find an
appreciative owner for this beautiful landscape? We would gladly knock
off a few thousand to someone who said "This is lovely! I want to
keep it." But we've already rejected an offer from somebody who wants
to destroy it. (Yes, I know...we're crazy.)
Thanks for any advice or suggestions you might have to offer.
:-) Tommy
This is a tragic tale, and we may have to face it someday too. We would
like to live further in the country with more land. Our house has more
than doubled in value and we might be able to make the move with such a
tiny mortgage. But my "ideal" would be to keep this house for a couple
years after finding the perfect country place, so I could slowly move
whatever of our plants can be moved to the new place.
We've created a "woodland" trail around our house which takes up just
about everything that "ordinary" people would have kept lawn. Even among
our neighbors I'd say two-thirds think we're wonderfully eccentric and
visit us for tours while walking their dogs, the other third are
lawn-nazis who probably wish our island of trees and shrubs and shade
plants didn't exist (at least one person has registered this opinion to
our faces -- his yard is a combination of concrete and river rocks with
just a couple shrubs).
The idea of just digging half of it up to toss, so that a "nice" evil lawn
would increase the customer base to buy the house, it is just horrible to
ponder. If we ever pursue selling the place we may first TRY it as-planted
to see if some delighted eccentric like ourselves loves the "wilderness"
look of the enclosing garden, but I'd still worry someone would buy it
because it's a great house, and a week later tear out all the plants and
throw them away! So I'd still like some overlap to at least move the rhody
collection and whatever ferns and perennials aren't easily replaced.
Bigger shrubs that don't dig up well, and the trees, will just have to be
left to new owners' choices to keep or cut down.
There have got to be some halfway points though. Sacriaficing just one
side of the house's gardens, takign out enough for one tidy evil lawn
area, that might be enough for most potential buyers to feel they had the
expected lawn, with the other areas around the house becoming a plus for
great gardens rather than a negative for too much planted. Some shrubs at
least could be moved with ease even if they had to be given away.
If you don't have to move instantly it's worth treating the gardens as the
asset ADDING to the value, and not decide too quickly nobody's going to
say oh I love this landscaping, this is the house for me. You could start
with just some limbing up to give an airy open feeling that keeps
prospective buyers from thinking trees take up too much of the space.
-paghat the ratgirl
--
visit my temperate gardening website:
http://www.paghat.com
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http://www.weirdwildrealm.com