How important is a garden?

[Blueberry75]

DS is 9mo and we currently live in a 3 storey town house which is a right royal pain in the arse. We are renting and looking to move.

Just viewed a ground floor flat but it has no garden - should this be a deal breaker? Positives are: open plan (great to keep eye on DS at all times which would be fantastic) no stairs, very close to amenities, big family bathroom, parking, to name a few.

Would we regret no garden though? DS not crawling/walking yet and there's no way I'd leave him out in a garden yet anyway.

We lived in a nice 2 bed flat until the boys were 3 and 5.

We then moved to a 3 bed with a garden, it was different world!

Instead of constant trips to park with pram, all the stuff, sun cream, drinks etc. packed, or soft-play or even the mall (just to have somewhere to go) having a garden has been amazing.

But a communal garden, or green could also work. We are lucky to have both, and they play in our garden but increasingly on the communal green too (cup de sac, not much traffic) now they are 9 and 11.

But the person who most loves the garden is me, love sitting outside, drying laundry outside, looking at flowers (ahem and …weeding), bbqs with friends...

I fell in love with a town house where every floor was split level, so there were actually 6 mini flights of stairs. Plus a tiny garden but it also had access to big (private) communal grounds. Impractical on so many levels but I would have loved to have lived there.

It was probably a blessing that it fell through, though, as we found a much more suitable house with 70 ft garden which DD loves. We saw it first at night and I didn't appreciate how big the garden was - it's much bigger than any of our local friends & I am hoping it becomes the default 'party house' for BBQs, Easter egg hunts, etc. it turned out to be the best decision we could have made. Takes a fair bit of work to maintain it but I love gardening so it's a joy rather than a chore to me.

On the open plan issue - we have a small kitchen with an arch rather than door, so we put a stair gate across it & it's perfect: I can see DD playing in the hall or call out to her if she goes in another room, and she is safe from the oven, etc.

Unfortunately modern houses won't allow this, kitchens must have fire safe doors, (which is fair enough) so when we renovate later this year the archway is getting replaced with a door.

One compromise would be to have an open plan room but arrange the kitchen units in such a way that you could put a gate across the opening to the kitchen area. If you were planning a dream kitchen, that is!

Up and down stairs only really for getting up/feeds/naps and bath time but as rooms are split over 3 levels it seems like double for some reason. Stairs certainly not only reason for moving though (freezing cold house in winter, leaks causing a ceiling to be replastered, smallish rooms so lack of space to name a few).

The general consensus seems to be that open plan isn't the ideal I thought it would be for an imminent crawler/cruiser... flat has wooden floors too so I suppose even worse?

Moving in another year would be a pain. We're not even sure exactly where we want to ultimately end up (town/country). But I feel desperate to get out of this house as the rent is high and it's the most difficult, pain in the arse house I've lived in. It needs razing to the ground and rebuilding/refitting without any of the landlord's botched DIY attempts.

Standing shivering in the garden supervising preschool children is much more boring (for the parent) than being in the park. If you find somewhere with a just sunny patch of grass that you can see properly from the kitchen then that would be ideal for a toddler. Many gardens are quite stressful to supervise staggering toddlers in, due to steps, thorns, escape routes, stones to eat etc. If you are hoping to have another child soon then a big garden would be lovely in the future, as they can play together in it. If your son is unlikely to have siblings then being near the park woukd be especially good.I've much preferred using the park until recently, but now that my children are 3 and 5, a big garden is top of my wish list when we move house.

Good point about toddlers and stairs. And about needing a stair gate for the kitchen.

I thought there would be lots of replies about how great open plan living is and how overrated gardens are but I was very very very wrong.

DS very likely to be an only child.

DS is nearly 3 and will be an only child. I found open plan living ideal during the baby and toddler stage. He didn't need to follow me as he could see me, ditto I could see him so there were less interruptions for me (e.g. while cooking, he wants me or I hear a bang, I just look over while stirring the pot.) Also not having stairs was great.

We have just moved to a house with a garden and it is great that he can be out while I'm not, but he wants to go to the nearby park and play with other children. And he prefers if I'm in the garden with him. So I see the benefits of both living situations. For us though, an open plan flat was ideal for the first 2 years.

Re wooden floors and crawlers - we put down a big thick rug in the living room and that really helped DD crawl - extra friction on the knees helped steady her. Also easier for sitting unaided than a slippery surface. Our rug is now horribly stained & ruined but as soon as DD is out of toddler stage we'll replace it with a nicer one.

OP I loved open plan too early on but it does change as they grow up, especially with a boy. Its really hard trying to guess what you're going to want over a period of years. We're at junior school age now, but no doubt our needs will change too when we have teenagers.

We had open plan in the early years (newborn / toddling twins) and just cordonned off the kitchen with a very large one of these

www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/1889134.htm?CMPID=GS001&_$ja=cgid:13739895990|tsid:41361|cid:166594950|lid:63079403141|nw:g|crid:38899073790|rnd:7648242438815176506|dvc:c|adp:1o2

It was great - they could be playing, I could be playing with them, lots of room etc but when I needed to be in the kitchen, they were still in sight but safe.

As they got older, they seemed to accumulate tat. For a boy, think big wooden pirate ship, big garage with cars / train track & trains, boxes and boxes of lego. Board games, super hero dressing up (masks / swords), toy keyboard / guitar argggghhhhh. Stuff that you can't necessarily fit neatly into a cuboard. In my case, I gradually had my grown up space taken over by brightly coloured plastic. That, and the fact that as they grown older you want separate space sometimes meant that we've steered away from everything being open plan in this house.

So open plan good for very early years. Thanks miramar, marshmallow and mandy for the tips. Shall spend another night sleeping on it!

My brother and I grew up with no garden, and I honestly never missed it or longed for one. My parents were great at taking us to the nearby park very regularly.