Convince me I'm better off without a garden please!

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Hello, we live in a terrace with no garden, put house on market this year hoping to move to semi with garden for kids (age 4 and 1), but have now decided to take house off market and settle where we are because all in all that's the best thing for us. We could just about have afforded the garden but we'd have had to watch every penny for years and couldn't have managed if either of us couldn't work full time for any reason.

I know there are many worse plights than having no garden but I tend to idealise what I don't have and have to confess to bouts of garden envy (BBQs! bouncy castles! impressive flowery things! home grown tomatoes! Other stuff!).

So please, can anyone help disillusion me and share your downsides of garden ownership? Or the upsides of not having one? Thanks!

I'd love to not have a good. Never go on it but have to pay to maintain it as I'm too lazy to lift a finger in it! As long as you have lots of parks, open spaces etc nearby, you'll be fine.

Have you got literally no garden or have you got a small courtyard thing? Because I love tiny courtyards. Best of both worlds. Low maintenance, just enough room for tiny set of table and chairs, still lots of potential for creating a cosy space.

If you mean no outdoor space, well that's ok too -

I have just moved out of a house I lived in for fifteen years to a little flat with no garden and I can't tell you how nice it is not to have to try to keep a garden nice. Oh my lord I'm enjoying it.

If My partner and I want to relax outside we'll go to a beer garden or other outdoor space, and if we're in the mood for pottering we do so in public gardens or national trust properties or just out in the woods or parks.

Honestly I think you've made the right decision.

Have you got a yard or is there no outdoor space at all?

I couldn't live without my garden but it hard work and cost me a lot of money and time.

I don't have a garden and have 3 Dds. When it is a nice day we go to the park or enjoy city life. We live in Scotland and the summer was so wet we would have spent every dry day cutting the grass and weeding if we had a garden to manage.

I don't even have outdoor drying space but mostly that means I don't spend days in the house playing chicken with the laundry and the rain.

When we both worked FT with no dc we had a garden which was very tying. I do miss home grown tomatoes and raspberries. Are there any community gardens or allotments you could share in near you? We did some volunteering for the RSPB last year which got us all out gardening (2 teenagers and a toddler pulling out weeds in the marshes was a great day out)

You could perhaps grow things in window boxes?

When I lived in house without a garden it was only when it was sunny that I missed a garden. And we'd just go to a park or my parents or somewhere. There aren't THAT many sunny days anyway. At least not in Yorkshire!

I have the smallest of gardens (little terraced house), which is mostly concrete and decking with a tiny lawn. Even that's a ball ache to maintain at times - creosoting the fence, mowing the lawn, sorting out the bikini-line bit where the walls meet the floor.

However, having lived in a flat I do appreciate having a little patch of outside. Good for washing, letting the DC out for some fresh air, growing a few pots of herbs.

We also live over the road from one of the UK's biggest areas of parkland, so don't need to go far to ride a bike or kick a ball. I might feel less OK about our tiny garden if we didn't have the park.

We're in a terrace but we have a wee garden, just a square of grass really.

I like it but it is a PITA because grass grows faster than you can ever imagine. It always needs bloody cutting.

It deludes you into thinking you might be good at gardening, so you spend shitloads on some plants that all die because actually you're rubbish at gardening.

It provides somewhere for mystery animals (I think fox, DH thinks cat) to shit all over.

It means that when you're feeling antisocial and you don't want to chat to your neighbour you can't avoid them because they have a bloody garden to potter in as well.

Wow, thanks everyone for getting back so quickly! We do actually have a small yard about 9ft by 12 ft, its northfacing so get a bit slimy and horrible during the winter but actually quite nice in the summer. I'm thinking about astroturfing it and changing a back window into French doors so in the summer the kids could at least charge in and out and have a sandpit or some lego outside.

Blibblobblub your point about delusions of competence made me laugh! Oh the equipment in my house from various hobbies I took up on that basis...

One of my friends has a fab outside space in just about the smallest courtyard/terrace one could imagine. Small table and two chairs for sitting outside with a glass of wine when weather permits, potted decorative plants and several types of vegetables growing in pots as well. I love it, and it's just so nice and easy to look after.

My mum has an even smaller table and chairs on her tiny balcony, and grows roses in pots out there as well. It's literally just big enough to step out and sit down but it's a beautiful cosy little space.

Honestly, I would love a bigger garden, but only if it was well planned and low maintenance. My parents got theirs done recently and it's an absolute dream.

We looked at another house before we bought this one that I loved because it had gardens to three sides. In hindsight it'd have been an absolute nightmare!

find all the local parks and open spaces and make the most of them, at the very least you have saved your self weeding and mowing the lawn

Make your small yard nice it s all you need. No outside space at all is a pain..but a small space is fine and yes get the big doors open to it. AstroTurf or composite decking tiles. Bbq table chairs lights sandpit

We moved from a house with a huge garden, to a bigger house with a small garden. It's takes little time, money and effort to maintain and there is no grass to mow or rarely any weeds to dispose of. On nice days we go out anyway. We wont ever have a big garden again.

Thanks everyone. You've cheered me up! Am going to get on and get quotes for getting doors put in and yard done up - have decided to invest the amount I'd have spent in stamp duty and estate agents fees on this house, and see how good we can make it. Thank you all

I don't know - we have a massive garden which is lovely but takes up loads of time and money, and we have a gardener 5 hours per week and it still needs loads of effort from us dh.

However, I'd love a dinky little spot - you could make it so stylish and it would be easy to maintain. I would have it filled with white flowers only.

Gardens for every house are a strangely English obsession.

Many New Yorkers and Germns and French and Spanish live in apartments : you have no outdoor space of your own, but make the best use of parks and play areas locally

Some of the eye wateringly expensive houses in SW London have no garden larger than a dining table - but have parks and squares nearby

its essential that children have space to play outdoors
it is not essential that you own it

We only had a courtyard that we paved until we recently moved, my youngest was 9 by then.

Honestly it's great, they could use it in all weathers. Never had a slide or swing for them to argue over. Lots of ride ons and a playhouse kept them busy for years and years.

As they get older and want to play football etc most gardens are too small anyway!