How important is a garden?

[RudyDudy]

Okay - long shall we / shalln't we move house saga going on. Won't bore you with all the details but one of the key sticking points seems to be a garden. At the moment we have a small courtyard garden - v. nice but not at all child-friendly. We have the chance to move to somewhere with a better sized garden that would have some lawn area for children to play on. We currently have 1 DS and are hoping for another lo.

So, if a garden were the only deciding factor would you move for it?

Hope that makes sense. My brain is a little addled with thinking about it all!

Yep

Definitely. It's wonderful to have the garden for the kids as long as it's well closed in and safe for them.

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Agree with the rest.. but there are lots of work for the weekends too.

Gardens very good for kids, but not as important when selling as you may not be selling to people with kids, however you should still make the area look nice! so people can picture their house warming bbq on your patio/yard!

Yes without a doubt! we were thinking of moving because although the house is great, we'd love a really big garden, but couldn't afford what was in the area at the time, well to get the equivalent sized house IYKWIM

Go for it.

A garden was a BIG incentive to us. So nice to have somewhere familiar and safe to turf them out into for a spot of screaming and running about. Plus chances to meet other people's cats, get acquainted with worms, snails, see the sky, grow some sunflowers, have a paddling pool, run in and out of your washing, put out food and water for birds...

I definitely would want a garden. It's so nice to be able to chuck the kids out on a nice day... and to have somewhere nice to sit when the weather is nice....

Yes. We moved for a garden last summer and I can't wait for this summer! We were living in a flat - large and with a communal garden, but not one I could see from the flat and then we just had a balcony. Ds (4) became a real indoor person, had to be dragged out to parks and so on and he is still reluctant to go outside, although he loves it once he is there. I'm hoping having kitchen doors open and space to run will change things for him this year.

well that's pretty unanimous . Thanks for the responses - it's all getting so complicated it's nice to have some straightforward input!

its a must! to have a garden esp for your kids. we've got a small backyard (we couldnt afford a house with a back garden) so a gardener ripped out our backyard and relayed a new floor and a small garden which i am very happy now. i know its not much but at least kids can play on it.

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I think a garden is really important when the children are small, but less so when they get older - depending on your area. When mine were U5s we used to spend MASSES of time in the garden.

But now they only venture into the garden occasionally. If they want to do something 'physical' - run around, play football, ride their bikes, etc., they need a LOT of space so go down to the local playing field or the park or play in the street.

Yes.

Think of a garden as an extra room in summer, one you don't have to tidy up as thoroughly.(Although you do have to do weeding etc., but somehow that's not as mind-numbingly boring as vacuuming!)

so how big (given the choice) is big enough?

15' square? 20'...we're viewing loads of houses at the moment that we love, but the gardens are titchy (15' by 12' one of them)...

given that you do take kids to the park a lot of the time, is there an optimum size for little ones?

i love my garden its not huge but a decent size..big enough for me to have a dog area, a patio bit a shed and a bit for all my ds toys ie slide etc..he is only b15mths but even last summer he loved being in the garden and this year am sure he will love it more....so i would move to have a garden especially with kids as i think as they get older if u ave a garden its a good place to throw them and their mates..lol

I'd say as big as poss, because there are some days you really don't want to take kids to the park because you're busy doing stuff indoors, but they want to play about with a ball or whatever.

Having said that, imo any garden is an extra space and a wonderful resource for children (and adults), even a tiny one.

sophable - our current garden is about 15' square and we are thinking that it is too small to be of use from a kiddie point of view. The one I viewed today wasn't huge by some standards but was about 40' long and had lawn so would have room to run about, kick a ball, etc.

Everyone's responses here are really making us think how valuable we would find it to have this space for DS to play in.

Looks like we might have to compromise and move from 2 mins to the station to 10mins away!

Hmm, when we moved a year ago we went from a long, skinny 60 ft garden to one about the same size as yours is now, RudyDudy. Apart from small borders on 3 sides it is completely paved. I wasn't keen at first, but love it now. It is great for ds (nearly 5) to ride his bike on, and there is also the side of the house in front of the garage for football. If he wants more of a runaround there are open spaces and beach nearby.

We had decided that we would compromise on garden size for a house in exactly the area we wanted, with off-road parking. A huge garden would have been wonderful from my point of view but I know just who would have been responsible for the maintenance (!) and went for the easy option - kids are happy just to have "a space", don't think they are concerned at how big or small it may be.