New build - garden sloping, not sure of rights?

buel10

Hi all.
Some of you may know from my posts that my wife and I have been fortunate enough to get a mortgage for a new build house. I would like to ask whether my 'concern' about the garden with the house is a relevant one:
You will see from the photos attached that the garden slopes quite significantly towards the fence that separates it from a field. I was hoping that there would be something in place (perhaps some sort of supporting structure) to enable the garden to be flat, as it seems that I have lost some of the available area because of this (also, ball games are going to be a pain, I predict!).
Also, the grass isn't looking too healthy in one strip (perhaps I should save that one for a specific garden forum).
Any advice would be useful on this,
Thank you in advance.

AdrianC

You saw the plot before reserving, right...? So you knew that the terrain was on a hill...
Did they say your garden would be flat, or did you just assume?

Water the grass until the turf establishes a bit better.

greatcrested

So some gardens slope.In fact thousands... tens of thousands?.... of gardens in the UK have slopes, hillocks, ups&downs.

Unless your contract specifically stated the garden would be flat (highly unlikely but by all means read it and check) your concern is misplaced. Do some landscaping if you don't like the design.

As for the grass it does not look that bad, but a new lawn takes time, and care, to get established.

buel10

AdrianC said:

You saw the plot before reserving, right...? So you knew that the terrain was on a hill...
Did they say your garden would be flat, or did you just assume?

Water the grass until the turf establishes a bit better.

No, honestly, we did not view the plot as we had originally been about to buy the plot next door....but then this came up.
Fair point!

buel10

greatcrested said:

So some gardens slope.In fact thousands... tens of thousands?.... of gardens in the UK have slopes, hillocks, ups&downs.

Unless your contract specifically stated the garden would be flat (highly unlikely but by all means read it and check) your concern is misplaced. Do some landscaping if you don't like the design.

As for the grass it does not look that bad, but a new lawn takes time, and care, to get established.

I will check.....but you are probably quite right.
Landscaping it is then. Might have to secure that fence first.

Thrugelmir

Fill the gaps between the newly laid turves with bagged top soil from the garden centre. 

Davesnave

The soil retention at the fence is a bodge job, but with probably nothing in your contract specifying how it's to be dealt with you are probably stuck with it. The actual slope is no different than in many gardens throughout the land

The best long term way to retain that amount of soil would be a strip foundation and then a wall of some kind; a significant extra expense to add at the end and much easier to plan-in from the start. However, some builders don't work like that. They do the minimum, which is what you have.After all it won't be actionable within the remit of the NHBC guarantee, or similar.

This is how the British building industry is. It's probably much better than the Nigerian one, but successive governments haven't done much to ensure the consumer has more rights, especially in peripheral areas like this. As we often say here, you have better consumer protection when buying a bar of chocolate than a new house.

blue_max_3

It looks like your garden slopes and the slope increases towards the fence. I had a garden that sloped and hated it. So much so, that we terraced it. Much better and plates didn't slide off the garden table any more. The difficulty with this comes with matching the neighbours property, so you're not towering above them. Personally, I'd get myself in, get to know my neighbours and maybe you can work together in harmony, to maybe lay a flat patio at least.

RelievedSheff

You say that you didn't view the plot in question but surely you viewed an external works drawing that showed the levels that the garden would be laid too?

Unfortunately if you buy a plot on a sloping development then you are very unlikely to get a flat garden unless you are very lucky. There is always the odd one that works out to be fairly flat.

Developers will make the levels work in whatever is the cheapest method for them and adding a small slope as you have at the bottom of your garden is a damn sight cheaper for them than building a retaining wall.

buel10

greatcrested said:

So some gardens slope.In fact thousands... tens of thousands?.... of gardens in the UK have slopes, hillocks, ups&downs.

Unless your contract specifically stated the garden would be flat (highly unlikely but by all means read it and check) your concern is misplaced. Do some landscaping if you don't like the design.

As for the grass it does not look that bad, but a new lawn takes time, and care, to get established.

I think you may have missed that the slope increases dramatically towards the fence?

buel10

Davesnave said:

The soil retention at the fence is a bodge job, but with probably nothing in your contract specifying how it's to be dealt with you are probably stuck with it. The actual slope is no different than in many gardens throughout the land

The best long term way to retain that amount of soil would be a strip foundation and then a wall of some kind; a significant extra expense to add at the end and much easier to plan-in from the start. However, some builders don't work like that. They do the minimum, which is what you have.After all it won't be actionable within the remit of the NHBC guarantee, or similar.

This is how the British building industry is. It's probably much better than the Nigerian one, but successive governments haven't done much to ensure the consumer has more rights, especially in peripheral areas like this. As we often say here, you have better consumer protection when buying a bar of chocolate than a new house.

This is interesting, thank you. Regarding getting the developers to do something about this, at the moment they are 'our friends', and to be fair, have been great with everything we wanted them to do up to now, so maybe there is some leeway if we ask......