I can't stand my new home

I really feel for you, @WannabeWriter1988. Before we moved to the UK, I was adament that I didn't want to live in the south, and certainly not the southeast. Yet here we are and I hate it even more than I imagined. Both of us are used to wide open spaces and the traffic, noise, living on top of each other feeling (nevermind the vaping!) is driving me mad. Thank goodness it's only a rental...

You can have a beautiful, mature and verdant garden just using pots.
Get as many as you can and loads of compost and plant food. Then you can start building up a collection of perrennials that will come back each year. It's a bit late fit summer bedding but you can get plants for all seasons. And herbs, vegetables.

Not related to the house per se but you should start trusting yourself and stop relying on other people to tell you how you feel. You have to tell your DP you’re desperately unhappy in this house and want to start the process of moving as and when tenancy ends/money allows. Stop asking for other peoples opinions as the only relevant opinions are yours and your DPs. But ultimately if you’re that unhappy then he should be happy to move somewhere new that you can both happy with

Your imagination is clearly very limited.

I completely understand. I've just turned down a move to a spacious flat with a sea view - pretty much on the front. This was a lifelong dream of mine. However I'd be giving up my garden in my small terraced house. I can't do it. The boundaries on 2 sides are Hawthorn hedges, quite large and well established. The birds are amazing - finches, bluetits, robins, sparrows, blummin crows and pigeons... But I couldn't not have them.

I'm not helping am I? But I understand.

Have a look at bird feeders, bird boxes, bug hotels - anything to attract wildlife.

I had one of those bee hotels (?) I can't remember. Had it for years, nothing. Then 1 year a little leaf cutter bee would fly back and forth with its perfectly cut leaf to pop in and seal off the eggs she had laid. Rinse and repeat for her.
It doesn't take much. Do get your plants potted and outside, bird table or box...
Good luck! Give it a couple of summers...

Moving from a friendly village into a house in a town where you are over looked on all side with no garden must be very hard. I would hate it. But I guess you do what seems best for your family.

I couldn't live like that either Op.

Put some plants in the garden, some tall grasses in pots to block out some of the neighbours. Put bird food out too. Start making the garden a little nature haven and they should come.

But yeah, doesn't sound all that great and sounds like where I live now but throw in 3 pubs very close! Perhaps revisit it in a few years with the thought of moving?
We're doing up a house that's rural at the moment and have a 5 year plan. I've not seen the house my partner bought with his inheritance (I know!), but loads of videos etc. If I really don't like living there, we will sell up and move again. It's nice to have that safety net/plan and a partner willing to move if I hate the house.

The place does sound suffocating & it appears like me you like to be surrounded by nature. I would get to work. You say the garden is tiny. I've see the smallest of balconies transformed into a beautiful oasis of plants, flowers) a bird table to attract birds. The inside of a property can also be transformed by adding the most realistic fake greenery & flowers. Nowadays you can't tell the difference. I would also add white wooden slim slat venetian blinds. Mirrors can make a huge difference especially the long vertical mirrors strategically placed. I hope this helps

Yes the pots are a great idea.

Lavender is brilliant for attracting bumblebees and butterflies, which will give you a lovely sense of a busy, moving insect cloud about them. I love the hum of bumblebees!

Hi @WannabeWriter1988 hop over to the gardening topic and post for advice there. It’s a lovely corner of MN.

you can get some shade loving plants if need be - lots of things do well in pots.

I’d hate that too - if you’re renting I’d move as soon as practicable.
If you’ve bought it, gardening in pots is an option. You can get trees to grow big-ish in a pot. But, obviously big pots. As big as you can carry! I have some trees that don’t like our soil type in old galvanised water tanks, the type people used to have in lofts as the water tanks. Or old fashioned metal dustbins, thats the sort of size you need to make it long term planting, the more soil potted trees and shrubs have the more they can look after themselves - if it dies in a pot its the gardeners fault! Don’t scrimp on your planting material as you’ll only make work for yourself. Plenty of trees/shrubs are fine in the shade - if the weathers like this summer, they're better for it! If you wait till the autumn you can get bare root trees and shrubs much cheaper and they establish better with winter planting.

A kumquat tree can look really pretty and atmospheric in a pot OP, and they tend to do well in them.

Why did you move there on the say so of friends and family?
When it comes to somewhere to live always go with your gut.

Do everything you can to make it nicer for you, lots of good suggestions. And start looking to move, nobody else has to agree with you. If you hate it, you hate it and that's enough. You both need to be happy.

You can get gorgeous shade-loving plants OP, ferns and that sort of thing. It will be fun doing the research and planting up. I think if I were you, given the fact that there is not much sun anyway, I'd be getting the fences as high as I could within legal limits to block out as much as I could, and then trying to create a jungly vibe with the planting, so all you see when you look out is green-ness. Have a look online at houses with an inner courtyard in the centre of the (luxury!) house for inspo.

It will cost but as I said, it will be fun and it will solve part of your problem. Good luck!

I bought a fabulous fern from Waitrose ( Boston fern) £6.50. it's about 12 inches. It's technically a house plant and not poisonous to pets.
I've been buying house plants due to putting our house up for sale. I bought nine for £40 on line.
Lidl does excellent plants
If the garden is tiny you can fill it quite quickly. Ask for plants for house warming gifts. Watch Instagram for ideas or gardeners world, 8pm fridays bbc2

Would it help to accept that you don't need to like it for it to be the right place for now?

It allows you to have your lives in a convenient place at this stage. Does it have the space etc you all need?

Sometimes we take the convenient option over what we really want and that's fine in houses too, especially when renting.

Try and make it greener. Get privacy film. Maybe gazebo or something for the garden that blocks out some of the being overlooked (especially from upper windows). Feel some achievement in encouraging nature.

I'm sure you are not wrong in your list of dislikes but if it fills a gap for now then it's okay and you can make the best of if it while knowing you want different at some point.

A place where you can’t see the sun.
Where there is no wildlife; not even a single spider?

It’s dystopian.

Trellis amd climbers. Some outdoor mirrors? Pack fo 3 at B&M for a fiver right now!l all their outdoor stuff cheap there now. Even packs of outdoor lights. The flickering ones are fab. £7 a pack .

Just to say, @WannabeWriter1988, I 100% understand. I've lived in the middle of built-up areas in the past and never again...

Can you get blackout blinds so at least at night you can have a dark bedroom?

We have a tiny gravel and concrete garden. We have filled it with pots of flowers and small trees! It is very overlooked and faces northeast.,, all the things that are ‘bad’ for a garden. But we have loads of insects and bees and birds and even a tiny little pond. It can be done!

I totally get how you feel @WannabeWriter1988. The only positive is that in your case it's just a rental. For now I'd be doing as others have suggested and buy some shade loving plants so that wildlife is encouraged to come into your garden. It will hopefully make it a more inviting space for you to spend time in too! Long term, though, I'd be planning to find somewhere in an environment more like the one you were in previously.

We sold our last house in a very rural location with virtually no neighbours to move back 'home' to the south coast of England. Both DH and I are originally from south coast cities, but haven't lived there since moving away in 2007. I always saw myself as a city girl, with DH the country lover, but having moved around the UK renovating houses, living mostly in villages or more rurally, I now realise city/town life isn't for me either.

In order to buy in a more expensive location than where we'd spent the past 6+ years, we knew we'd have to give up our detached house with 0.5 acre garden full of wildlife and plants we'd lovingly planted. I also had a dream of living close to the sea (and family!) again.

The reality is we're in a small town, two minutes walk from the beach, but have a paved garden and whilst our semi-detached cottage is gradually regaining its period charm, it's also surrounded by intrusive neighbours and buildings, but few trees, which I absolutely hate. Fortunately our garden isn't overlooked at all, but we've crammed it full of mature planting in huge pots anyway to try to recreate what we gave up. It's a project house and as soon as it's finished (doing it mostly ourselves, so taking ages!), we'll be selling and trying to find something more rural again, albeit this area, closer to family.