Who pays for lawn/garden maintanance?  

So talking to numerous commercial realtors can many times shake the trees.As far as the 1031 goes what you're proposing is really just a garden variety diversification and shouldn't cause any issues. 

The biggest issues are that they will probably have a very hard time finding another rental house and they have a LOT of stuff to move, including garden plants.So how would you approach this?

While you will benefit from economies of scale for bigger items like a roof, you don't gain in the individual units.For instance, a 10 unit mf building, garden style, will have roughly the same size roof as a two story 20 unit property with the same footprint.

@Cory Dean Hello, please look at Arlington, or Dalworthington gardens area where property prices are still cheap, and rents are good.This particular combination has given me the fastest time to pay off my multiple properties I got over there ..Let me know if you have any questions ..

They made great extra weed block in the garden.

The home is nicely landscaped, but most of the acreage is a dirt field, which was used for gardening and fruit trees.  

Look at Orange County, CA and compare Newport Beach to Garden Grove.Twenty years ago, my father bought 15 properties in the Fresno, CA area.

I live on Palace Garden.

They literally were wholesaling a house for $30k more than the house next door was listed on MLS that was almost fully turnkey, and considerably bigger(1500 more sq ft lot + 1br/1.5ba larger) in the Garden Oaks area of Houston.