Is this garden too small?

[Anonabc]

Really struggling to find a home. Found one that’s lovely but DH thinks the garden is small - it’s 9.5metres by 12 metres. What do you all think? He thinks we will regret it as kids are so young. Yes I also think the garden is small but nearby is a huge park. I’m really torn

It sounds around the same size as ours. Unless your gardeners, I wouldn't want anything larger. Thinking about it our friends all have similar sized gardens and bought up families there. It's been fine.

That's not too bad actually. You wouldn't be able to fit swing sets, trampolines and the like in it all the time, but you can still have something, plus a small shed for outdoor storage and a patio set. Huge park nearby massive bonus.

Our first house had a paved yard with borders around the edges, it was OK too. (That garden would fit on the patio of current garden!) We had the Little Tykes galleon water play thing and DS would pedal his little tractor and later a scooter around. We just went to the park occasionally for the swings and things.

My garden is wide and 40ft in length , I’ve always found to too small, I’d like it to be longer. My parents on the other hand love the size of my garden and think it’s perfect.

Once they are older you need an absolutely HUGE garden for the park not to be preferable for playing Footie etc.

Gardens are work, the larger the garden the more the work.

Ours is 12.8m * 7.5m ish (7 6ft fence panels by 4 6ft fence panels). I find it very small. With two boys there's not really room for any outdoor toys and a shed. Or well there is, but then there's no usable lawn. It's better than nothing (and we have a huge park nearby), but it's annoying and means we can't use the garden how we'd like to.

Seriously. It's the width of the house. It's perfectly fine. You could patio a bit, round the exits, to a straight level end point. Loads of room for a trampoline, flowerbeds, table and chairs, bbq. Literally lost on what the problem is. Yes it's not humongous for gardeners aka Monty Don, but ....

Our new build has a similar size (they told us it’s 10x12 but I haven’t measured it). It’s absolutely fine, although I was worried as it’s smaller than our last garden.

It's more important to consider how much sun it gets and how overlooked you would be. If you are looking at a newish build, the trade off for a modern house is the cramped garden, usually. I prefer a smaller, older house with a large private garden. But that's a choice you have to make.

How much do you like gardening?

i realise I don’t really know the size of my garden but it’s a 1920’s semi with a decent though not huge size garden. I find new builds the ones that have minuscule gardens. A five bed house is being built in my road with a much smaller garden than mine,

DS played football, for a team for a decade. Once he got out about 11 he was at the football pitch in the park at the end of our road anyway.

We have a garden that is hardly overlooked. It has a corner with a large tree and canopy and bamboo screens so completely private. A shed, a bike shed a bench on the smaller patio and a veg growing area. My friend has a half acre garden. She has to pay for some gardening as her and her BF just don’t have time. She had all the high hedges sorted a couple of years ago and it cost £700.

I think that sounds like a perfectly nice garden. There is a trade off between big enough to use for kids playing etc and the time you need to spend maintaining it. It looks like you’ll have space for a patio/somewhere to sit, to dry washing and for children to play. I’d be more bothered about finding out how much sun/shade you get and where.

It's on the small side but we have a smallish garden and actually I much prefer it to the much bigger one we had in our previous house. We've made the most of the space by changing layout and adding a decking area, and actually it's really great not to have to spend lots of time gardening and mowing the lawn. We also live right next to lots of green spaces if the kids want more of a run around.

I think it’s fine.

I love gardening, but all we could afford was a house with a small courtyard garden. It’s got two brick raised beds, and I grow lots of things in those and pots - so still a great way of showing our DS how to grow your own fruit and veg.

There’s enough room to keep bikes and set up a tiny table for outdoor eating in summer- but that’s it. It’s a real shame, as DS is very active, and of course I’d love a big garden for him (and me!) - but this was all we could afford in the catchment area of the school we like the look of. We prioritised school catchment and proximity to a main line railway station.

We’re also near two playgrounds, a big park, a nature reserve, and can walk in to open countryside in ten minutes - so it’s not as if we’re cut off from loads of space nearby for bike rides and walks etc.

We take DS out twice a day to ensure he gets a good run around, and do lots of country walks etc. It is what it is; housing is expensive, and gardens in new homes are tiny. Increasingly, older houses with massive gardens get built on as soon as they’re sold nowadays too.

Yours looks fine, if it’s near a park I’d buy it - but my other priority would be quality of the nearby primary school. The years race by, and you’ll be applying before you know it.

Sounds massive to me! My current London garden is about 6m x 10m and is a good size for us. It's so much bigger than our previous garden, which was 5m x 3m.

It depends on how you want to divide up the space or use it as a whole. Do you want play equipment, lawn area, football goal, trampoline, bbq, patio, greenhouse, flowerbeds, pond, shed? Hopefully not all of the above! Perhaps choose a few things you might like and try to allocate some space in the floor plan for the different activities/zones you would like to have and see if they fit.

It looks fine to me.

As long as the house isn't massive which would mean the garden would be disparportionate then I don't see an issue.

It’s a little smaller than mine - but I just went out and measured and it is an okay size.

there is room for a paddling pool - a trampoline etc.

What does he envisage happening as the kids get older? Our garden is smaller and we have space for a BBQ, table and a trampoline.

Sounds fine to me. That’s twice the size of my garden. We don’t have DC so no play equipment but we do have plenty of space for gardening, shed, table and chairs, BBQ etc.

Oh and NDN does have DC and corresponding toys eg a trampoline, it’s not massive but seems to be big enough for two 6yos…

I had no idea how big my garden is so I've just measured it on google maps! Ours is 9m wide by 20m long.

Comparing to ours, therefore, 9.5m wide is absolutely fine. It's the 12m long that does feel a bit short, but to be honest, unless you've got a 50m long garden, there's only ever so much running around a child can do in a British garden anyway.

I will also say that of that extra 8m of garden length, I only ever use it to go to the shed or to water the plants!

A friend of mine has a smaller garden than ours which, according to google again, is 7m long and 7m wide. They've got a patio, a veg patch and a massive wooden climbing frame/swing set for their kids. Yes, the frame has had to encroach on the veg patch, but the kids have absolutely loved it over the years.

I think it'd be absolutely fine @Anonabc

That's about the same size as our garden. Ours is 12m x 8.5m
I have two boys and we've split the garden into three. One area is patio, middle are is grassed and final third is play equipment/swings.
Diving the area has made it feel much bigger.
Is it big enough to play cricket or the like, no. We go to the park for that, and tbh, I would like it to be another few metres bigger, but I love the house more. And we would have been priced out of the same house with a bigger garden so we compromised.

It sounds fine to me, I think mine is about that and it’s perfectly adequate for the kids - lawn to run around, space for a slide, Wendy house and mud kitchen and room for a patio for grown ups to sit on. I sometimes think I’d love a massive garden then I remember I’d have to maintain it.

Ours is 10 x 10. We just had it landscaped last summer, as it wasn't usable - tiny lawn, summer house and loads of borders. Now we have a patio, veg beds, larger lawn, herbaceous border, and plenty of room for trampoline/ paddling pool. We have a garage next to it for storage. We are out there every day playing/ eating now. So it really depends on layout. Room to play badminton/ swingball, not so much room for football or cricket. We back on to a field though, so just head out there for that. If you have a park nearby, even better! Agree I wouldn't want a bigger one unless I had a gardener, it takes up all our spare time maintaining it as it is.

www.successfulgardendesign.com/small-garden-re-design-david-margarets-garden/ This is 10mx7m and looks lovely!

So goes width way across 3 rooms. Seems fine to me

I think the layout of your house and garden is far more important than the size. My kid never used our garden due to the layout of the patio which was at the sie and the fact the conservatory had a side door that led to the patio not the grass.

We moved house to a house with a smaller garden but leading straight out and we all use it.