Is your back garden south facing?

[VeganCow]

I feel very appreciative of my south facing back garden and was thinking at weekend whilst enjoying the sun, that some people are not so lucky, and will have a garden that gets no sun.

Which are you?

Half and half.

We're south facing. It is lovely and sunny, but gets too hot for comfort. We're trying to introduce more patches of shade, but it is tricky and expensive.

Hard to say exactly -- it's roughly triangular, so although it's north facing according to the traditional description, it come out so far to the west side that most of it does face south (and the house is relatively small and jammed right over on the eastern boundary). The sun comes right round the side to fill most of the garden from fairly early on. Lovely. I was just thinking the other day how lucky we are, and how little I'd thought about this before we moved in.

I love the south-facing-ness of our back garden. It's a real suntrap and such a luxury to get evening sun. Piprabbit, have you tried fig trees and the like? tehy are lovely jungly-looking things and fast growing.

I wish it was, it never crossed our mind when we were looking for houses but it will if I ever move again. At this time of year when the sun is high enough we get a lot of sun but in the earlier months not so much.

My garden is north-facing but because of the layout of the houses, we have sun pretty much all day. Everybody says to avoid north-facing gardens but mine is perfect.

South, it's lovely. We've only been here a week

::Apologies for hijack::

Hello Grockle. Haven't seen you on MN for ages. The gardening action these days is on the Rhubarb Appreciation Society thread. Do drop in. All gardeners welcome.

We have a south facing garden, but sadly there is a woodland just to the south that, so we in fact are too shady to grow much more than moss!

Our main garden is west facing but we also have a south facing walled garden/orchard. I think that's my favourite bit.

is a deal-breaker for me, garden has to be south-west axis or i wont consider it.

This always confuses me. If I stand at the back of the house looking up the garden, it is north facing. If I sit on the decking looking down the garden to the house (catching the last of the Sun, glass of white in hand) then it is south facing.

Whatever it is, we get plenty of sunshine until the Sun drops behinds the houses further up the road (west).

Same as Beehatch we are South facing at the back but woods beyond the garden.
It means it is sunny right up by the house but shadier and damper and mossier the further from the house you get.

My garden is L shaped but the main part of the garden is east facing with Holm oak trees all down one side so it doesn't matter as it is always in shade on that side of the garden.
The other side is quite sunny. The main patio has sun until mid afternoon but the back patio has sun until late afternoon. Again the front garden is very sunny apart from the side where the oaks cast shade but as it is quite large there is still plenty of room for sun loving plants.

we have a small back yard (we're in Lancs) facing east.

It gets sun all morning, & most of the afternoon from the S as the sun goes round, but at best is in total shade after 5pm

I've got a North-East front yard and a South-West back yard. Perfect :) Morning sun at the front, and long golden evening shadows in the back. Love it!

We are talking tiny, though, so you only get an hour or two of full sun due to walls & fences. I also have healthy crops of moss!

Bumperella, do you grow figs outdoors? I can't imagine them surviving here (midlands), but am willing to give it a go if you can advise a fool-proof strain & method!

I'll pop over to the gardening thread, maud thank you. I've not been well & havent been able to do much but I'm itching to get out in the garden again. I did think of you all.

I'm in Melbourne, so north-facing is warm. My back garden is basically an east-facing square, very open so everything gets ambient light at the very least. The north-facing side gets roasted in summer and still lots of light in winter, so that's where the lemon tree, cacti and bougainvillea hang out in their raised bed.

At our latitude, the same as Athens but south of the equator, twilights are brief compared with the fabulous summers evenings of the UK. Someone said it's like a light being switched off.:o

SingingSands if you look out of your back door/window, and are looking at the sun at midday, it's south facing.
So, if I stand at my backdoor, first thing in the morning the sun is to my left (rises in the east) and in the evening the sun is to my right (sets in the west). So, the sun is at the back of my house, facing it, all day.

Ours is south facing, and we get lovely sunshine until about 12.30, when the shadows from the behemoth hedges/trees next door start blocking out all light! :( At least the bottom of the garden, where the veggie patches are going, still get sun all afternoon.

(pmsl here, just spotted a typo and corrected it before posting, that was almost a "friendly shat" with the neighbours! )

I couldn't agree with you more bran. Although we loved the open back garden aspect, what we love even more is the front garden which catches mid-day to evening sun and is enclosed, entirely surrounded by trees and fences and has a secluded paved yard, with raised beds. This is where we sit in the evening, and have a fire going while we listen to the the Archers or News Quiz.

North facing and on clay. So garden is dark and like a swamp 9 months out of 12.

I have garden jealousy.

Ours is south facing, it's heaven, and we have solar panels too. Our last house was shaded by trees , I really appreciate our sunny garden.