26 August 2008

Gardening in a rented house

This post is kind of related to my previous post. I have had several guys ask me why I spend so much time, energy and of course money on my garden, when it's not even my real house. One of them happened to be a former neighbour of mine. He was renting the house next door (the house on the left in the pic below).




This pic was taken last June and you can see the mess in the neighbour's garden. It's worse now and looks like a jungle. He told me just before leaving, that one of the reasons he was moving out was because the landlord didn't want to clear the mess at the back. "The landlord should clean it up. It's his house", he told me.

A lot of of my friends who are also renting houses here in the UK seem to agree with that. Of course, there's always the excuse that they are too busy with their studies or work, that they don't have the equipment and so on but I guess the main reason is that gardening is not simply their thing. It's different in my case.

Some people play golf in their free time, I do gardening in mine. Plus the hobby does not cost as much.

Even though I know it's not my own house, it's where I live and I would like to live in a house with a well maintained garden. I don't want to feel like I am living in a dump. I am also thinking about my kids. At least they can go and play in the back rather than on the road in the front.

It's wonderful if you have a landlord who cuts the grass (or has someone do it for him) regularly but even if you don't, I think you should do it yourself. After all, you are living there and it's your home.

6 comments:

lillian said...

We take good care of the garden even though we don't own the house ! I understand you invest in it. For bigger investments you could ask the house owner to pay :-)

Dilip Mutum said...

I didn't really invest anything in it. Of course I bought the plants and some tools. And that's it.

Bookwormz said...

i remembered pulling weed that grew until the height of my hip in the rented house's garden, with my bare hands a long while ago. had sore hands for a few days. my friends said 'i'm mad', i said 'i'm glad.' It was a therapeutic activity, like getting rid of the bad habit in my life.

skidg8 said...

bagusnyer bro, gardening...:)
sorry, tak tulis dlm bi sepenuhnya.
takpe kan?
anyway, keep up ur good work.
suka la baca cite dlm blog bro (cuma sy jarang tinggal jejak je...:))
owh yeah,1 more...best ye bro, dpt berjalan2 ke tmpt org..
bubui:)

Anonymous said...

My garden is rather dishovled. I need to clean it up!

Anonymous said...

I totally agree with you. It's really sad that some people just trash the place because it's rental property. They are the ones have to live with it, why not make it nice?!

Hello, first time visiting here. :)

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