If the property manager wants you to maintain the garden...

[danniellabella]

Then should they provide a hose and cover excess water costs?

Our property manager did an inspection yesterday and left a rather rude comment about the "lawn" needing to be watered urgently.

1. When we moved in, the "lawn" consisted of nicely mowed weeds.
2. There is no garden hose, shouldn't they cover the cost of buying a hose so we can maintain the garden?

[Visitor7]

Does it have it in the lease that gardens/lawns have to be maintained by the tenant? If not, then no. A property manager would be silly NOT to put it in the lease though. As for the hose, no, that would be tenants responsibility.

[danniellabella]

It is in the lease. It just seems a little strange that there would be no hose provided. In all of the houses we've rented before, a hose was either provided or we were asked to buy one and send the receipt to the property manager to reimburse us.

[Rainbow_Mumma]

we had big issues at our old house with our landlords and her "lawns" if its in the lease then you do have to maintain it but it is tentant costs stupidly and you wouldnt be able to water with a hose anyway due to water restrictions (depending where you are) we had to buy a grey water tank and install it ourselves

[ladybird11]

Thats my beef too - if they want the garden watered no worries, just don't make me pay the excess water for 'their' garden!

Luckily we don't have grass out the front - and weeds out the back are better looking than they were when we moved in

[Visitor7]

It could be a grey area. I've never heard, or seen of a situation where a tenant would be supplied or reimbursed a hose to keep lawns maintained. However, tenants have probably never thought of trying it It's a little like tv antennas. It's not the owners responsibility to supply one, but many do just to keep the tenant happy.
What does it say in the lease? Does it say to 'maintain lawns' or to 'keep lawns/gardens watered at all times'? If it doesn't say to actually water, then that would be your defense. Not sure of your water restrictions also, but you could also use that as well.

[danniellabella]

Well, we're gonna hire someone to prune all the plants. I was excited when we moved in to have a nice garden...but then quickly remembered that neither DH nor I know how to, or enjoy gardening!

I sware, when we get our own house, it's gonna have lots of paving, a bit of grass, and lots of hardy succulants or other drought hardy plants that look after themselves. (A set and forget type of garden)

[~clover~]

We've never ever been provided with a hose, but never been told to water either. But we always try to look after our lawns coz we like it & we like being able to let the kids run bare foot outside. We've always put in a bit extra money & time to have nice lawns & we try with gardens too, but the dogs aren't heping there right now!!

[danniellabella]

No, it says to keep lawns and gardens maintained at all times.
They even sent a letter saying that it all has to be rectified and returned to the state it was in when we moved in by 19 January when they will do a follow up inspection to make sure we've done it...they even included photos of what it looked like a week before we moved in!
Tell you what, I'm glad I have 2 weeks off at Christmas time.

[Visitor7]

If they want you to water and keep the lawns green, then let them know they will need to stipulate that in the lease when the renewal comes up. The wording of the lease is very important. Remind them that saying 'to keep lawns and gardens maintained at all times' does not necessarily mean to keep lawns green at all times. And insist that if this is what they want, they can provide the hose at the same time.

[briggsy's girl]

maintaining lawns, imo, is ensuring they are kept mowed and neat - NOT watering. watering grass is a wasteful exercise when water is already in short supply. provided the grass is dying off naturally and not from you parking vehicles on it, i would fight it. if their expectation is to have it watered, i would put it to them that they supply water tanks or grey water systems to facilitate this as it is wasteful and not required

as to the rest of the gardens - yeah, it's fair to keep them alive and watered within reason. if they are elaborate gardens, they should be ensuring someone is there to prune them correctly on a semi-regular basis (if we rented this house out, we'd pay for someone to maintain the roses every year so that they were pruned properly)

[~Gee_Whizzy~]

In Melbourne, i thought it was illegal (Under the 3A water restrictions) to water your lawns unless its from your own water tank?

[Gigi]

i'm a keen gardener, use buckets of water from the shower and bath to keep my garden alive, and i had about 80% of my plants DIE during our recent heatwave.

it's not realistic to keep a garden GREEN in the summer weather conditions we have in this city.

lawns need regular mowing to stay nice, they're a high maintenance garden plant and many varieties are very thirsty. Up to recently, it's only been legal to water here twice a week anyway.

i'm not sure your lease agreement is REALISTIC, but it's in writing, it's a legal document.

i hope the photo they took a week before you moved in, tallies with how the place looked when you moved in (not a photo taken YEARS before for example).

You can rectify the pruning (you're paying to get a gardener to do that), but i don't know how you can make a "lawn" of weeds, look like lush lawn by January, unless it all gets ripped out and new lawn is put in. And you don't know what the weather will be like for the next month anyway. Last few years MOST of summer here has been heatwave conditions.

i don't think your RE person or landlord is being realistic. you live in the driest state in teh driest continent, this is not northern hemisphere with heaps of rain!

whether you're a gardener or not, 43 degrees kills alot of garden plants. Heaps of mine turned into potato crips in one day - kaput.

[~clover~]

In Melbourne, i thought it was illegal (Under the 3A water restrictions) to water your lawns unless its from your own water tank?

That all depends on where you are. Danni is in Adelaide. Have no idea what restrictions, if any are there. We have none here. Floods every 3 months instead

Oh & these floods we are having & our front lawn is still patchy! Still looks brown & horrible. I only worry about the back really. Coz of the kids. Rain helps here majorly though!

[Kazbah]

I'd be checking your water supplier for the current water restrictions .. and if they are not sufficient to maintain a lawn, then request a grey water system to maintain the same lawn!

[Gigi]

my post (two above) covers the water restrictions that Daniellabella is living under.

up to recently, it was twice a week (6-9am). Just recently it was changed to 5x a week, an hour each time.

but because we have been under water restrictions for years, and used to hearing gloomy reports about how low the dams are, our water usage is still not high (as a city) even know restrictions have been eased (after a few big rains - big for here, small for other parts of australia), most people are just too scared to waste water i think - with good reason.

the city is mainly built on clay soils, so if properties are not kept watered, in many areas, this has an impact on the house too, (cracking of the walls).

sales of drought tolerant plants and synthetic lawn have gone up astronomically here.

even desert plants in my garden, like aloe vera and agaves, are so heat stressed it's not funny. Many of my succulents have either died or look so sick.

[YoYo]

From a landlords perspective (don't shoot me).....having lawns maintained to me means that they are kept the way they were when the owner (or previous tenant - subject to landlords satisfaction) left them. With my house and gardens in Perth, we pay for the lawns to be mowed and edged once a month (will change very soon) and expect only the garden beds, plants and grass to be weeded and watered. That is very clearly stipulated in our Lease. If you're a tenant who is not a gardener, then perhaps don't rent a house with a garden and save yourself the hassle!

Our house has bore water though, and a timer which we set to come on on our watering days for 10 minutes each station.

I don't particularly care whether the tenants don't maintain it to my standard while they are living there (and I can't see it) but I sure as hell expect to see it back the way I left it before I get it back for myself. If the tenant doesn't maintain it, then it only means harder work for them IYKWIM, so it's easier to do it than to fight and faff around asking for this and that. That's just me though and I'm a gardener!

As far as the hose, we left ours with the house, and expect it to be there when we get back. If I was a tenant in a house without a hose, I'd just go out and buy one of those ones for the grass that you lay there with the holes in it (or a regular one, whatever tickles your fancy)....but it would stay mine and I'd take it with me. No one gets anything for free!

[Rouge]

IMO....

If you don't want the costs that come with a garden, then rent a house on a concrete block. I have never lived in a house that didn't expect me to cover costs, and rightly so. My family gets to enjoy that garden and how much would it have taken for the owners to get the garden to the current state in the first place. And we've got a hose that we take with us to each rental house we've ever lived in.

HOWEVER, if it is stipulated in your lease that you do not need to maintain the yard as maintenance is provided then you have an awesome landlord! It's not a given and not something I've ever expected.

And no landlord is above the govt, so if you are expected to water the lawn yet water restrictions say you cannot then them's the breaks for the owner. Unless they provide you with a grey water system or a rainwater tank there is nothing they can do if the lawn dies!