They even do extra stuff around like the house (repairs and helping with the garden).I haven't raised the rent since they moved in.

They will eat up your time and be bad neighbors to other tenants and be rude to contractors like gardeners, etc. 

(Who would want to build garden apartments, when cap rates were so low in these new up and coming cities- hence 18 hour, and not 24 hour cities ;) So now those buildings will offer discounts, etc., and may also attract some class B tenants from the garden buildings.

They had 3 generations living in that big old home & their veg garden & home made slivovitz was amazing.

I also like your idea of the gardening/landscape renovations! 

That's not to suggest that all of my backyards look like Better Homes and Gardens, but anything that's visible to the neighbors I try to keep looking reasonably good and expect the renters to do the same.

We offer garden space, too, and it's in a neighborhood full of green-minded tenants here.

Garden hoses may not be connected to bath or kitchen faucets.

If you decided to do tiles then I think do the vertical tiles not the horizontal style 

.- Maintenance - roofs etc are more for a single-family per unit than a larger MF building which has 8-12 units in a typical garden-style apartment.Again, neither of these are totally hands-free operations unless you want to invest as a Limited Partner in someone else's deal, just slightly different headaches ;-)