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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Find Out Before You Buy If Landscaping Stays

Charles Fenyvesi The Washington Post

Handing over a garden to new owners can be as tricky a business as any other transfer of a cherished possession.

A friend tells the story of having bought a home with a nice garden one fine Monday. But when driving by the house on Tuesday, he was astonished to observe the seller digging up bulbs, perennials and bushes, putting them in bags and hauling them into his van.

Reluctant to confront him, the new owner drove right over to his real-estate agent and had her call the seller’s agent to stop the former owner from taking plants from a yard that was no longer his property.

The reply that reached the buyer the following day shocked him as much as witnessing the incident. The former owner categorically denied having been near the property.

The new owner then suggested a joint inspection but was reminded that missing plants do not automatically indict the former owner.

Also, the garden was not specifically mentioned in the contract. The buyer’s agent suggested that the new homeowner swallow hard and forget the whole episode.

The moral of the story is clear: Someone buying a house with valuable landscape plants should determine before the sale is consummated if those plants convey with the property.

If there is a significant plant collection, the shrewd buyer will take photographs and compile an inventory.

The shrewd seller will leave the plants behind, to serve as a selling point.

It is hard for someone who has toiled for years to create a garden to walk away from such a creation. But many mature trees and shrubs do not transplant well (even assuming an ideal new site for them), while perennials, annuals and bulbs are easily replaced.

It also makes sense for the buyer to be understanding and generous should the seller want to remove a plant with sentimental value - an azalea bush that was received as a wedding present, for example.

If the seller insists on removing more than a few specimens, the value of those plants should be negotiated and reflected in the sale price.

Plants change owners in other ways, and those transfers need sensitivity and forethought too. Another friend tells the story of her grandmother, a knowledgeable gardener and a lifelong collector and hybridizer of choice plants, whose treasures were ripped out by new owners after she died.

During the last two years of her life, she no longer could take care of the garden and it would have been appropriate for family members visiting her to dig and divide a few perennials to take home.

But her children were embarrassed to request any of her precious plants while she was still alive.

Eventually, the house was sold to someone who had no appreciation of the garden and turned it into a lawn. No one had saved a single plant. The episode left family members, the grandchildren in particular, disappointed.

At least one granddaughter feels that the family lawyer should have told the heirs that the plants represented an aesthetically and emotionally important legacy by which the grandmother could be remembered.

The lawyer then could have asked the grandmother if she had thought of bequeathing some of her favorite plants. Assuring their continuation with successive generations might have made the grandmother recognize more fully her achievement of creating a great garden.

Herbaceous perennials are easy to dig up and move to another town in plastic bags.

In the case of large shrubs such as mature viburnums or rhododendrons, cuttings might be taken.

This is an option too if a venerable old tree or shrub with great sentimental value must be cut down to make way for an addition or is simply at the end of its life.

In the case of the grandmother, the thought of leaving behind a living legacy could have brightened her last days.