How important is a garden when you have children?

[Snakesandpropertyladders]

We are house hunting and have found a nice house which ticks all of our boxes. It has an ok size garden but its not very child friendly. It's been heavily ( and expensively) landscaped and it looks beautiful but is tiered so nowhere to ride a trike or play football. There are also concrete steps coming directly down from the conservatory which could be dangerous.
We currently have a much larger garden that will be ideal for games of football, swings, slides etc, though the inside won't work for our family in the long term.
My baby is too young for playing outside at the moment so I've no idea how important or not a garden will be. Any words of wisdom?

I think just having outside space where you can do a hose, sand play, grow some herbs, all that stuff, it's just so lovely. It doesn't have to be big. Mine never ride bikes in the garden but when it's too much effort to go to the park or wre too tired or even just after school in the summer, it's like, costumes on, go out, get wet, make a den with these crappy old boxes etc. Maybe you could even do that with the garden as it is.

You can make dens in a flat. Mine did just that this morning.

But I miss water fights and long summer evenings. Eating outdoors. Paddling pool. They get that at grandparents houses but it's a shame we don't have it.

It's not a huge deal though

I think it's really important. My Inlaws have a garden like you describe OP & I don't think I'll ever let our child play in it due to the wall heights etc.
We are moving next yr & it's a bungalow (yea!) with a really big garden which we are going to half patio & still have lots of grass for playing.

That was a must have for us in our forever family home but I appreciate it hard to get everything you want. The bedrooms arnt massive but there are 2 living rooms so one is going to act as a toy room.

TheBogQueen we have a garden but we only go out to hang our laundry there. So I agree with you that you could happily live without it.

OP I'd say go for it. As Frustrated says for riding bikes, football you need a very big garden anyway, and it would be more enjoyable in a park. For the rest of activities, like sandpit, trampoline, BBQ, padding pool, I am sure you will find the space.

We're house hunting at the minute, partly because we want a garden. I think I might consider a tiered garden, if you could afford to do a bit of work to do it. I've seen some brilliant tiered gardens on pinterest, with slides using the tiers and treehouses.

Really important. Try getting some quotes to get it put as you'd like it, if you like the house a lot.

We live right by a park and have plenty of open space about 5 minutes' walk away.

Our garden isn't huge, neither are our local friends', but the kids very rarely ask to play in them (they would much rather go up to the woods or play in the park). If we put a tent up, they might play camp, or maybe play in a paddling pool but not for more than an hour or 2.

In contrast, our friends in local villages who have big gardens have trampolines/playhouses and all manner of climbing frames etc. The kids are outside a lot more...but at home by themselves rather than out and about bumping into people.

How long are you planning to stay in your next home? I used to stress about how (un)safe my house and garden were with a toddler, but they soon grow up (a 4 year old should be perfectly capable of tackling outdoor stairs; I think DD was managing cautiously at 2). If you do decide the place you mention is "the place", you could get a playpen for outdoors and put a stair gate at the conservatory door.

Couldn't you run with it and add wee little steps and slides and trellising to make the whole thing into an adventure playground?

Mine sometimes run in the garden - but as often they are out there playing make-believe. Despite having two boys and a reasonable size garden - a ball is very rarely kicked. They save sports for the park.