NW facing garden

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We're looking at moving (we want to stay on the same estate, but are buying a bigger house) but the only plot available soonish has a NW facing garden. How much would this put people off? At the moment we have a very small south facing garden. Would we ever get any sun?

There is the same house type being build further along with a W facing garden, but they won't give me a time frame on when that one will be completed but it's looking likely that it won't be until the end of the year. Is there a massive difference between a NW and W facing garden?

I'd really appreciate any advice

You should probably post this in the gardening forum!

Yes, the aspect of a garden makes quite a lot of difference - but it really should be see in conjunction with other things. A south-facing garden that is surrounded by tall buildings will be a very different place from an one that is open. Gradient, surrounding trees and structures, shelter all make a big difference.

A lot depends on what you want from your garden, really. I have a north-facing garden - mine's north-east. There are tons and tons of beautiful shade-tolerant plants that grow very nicely indeed in such an environment. Creating something beautiful is really very easy. However, you may struggle to grow a conventional lawn, and very sun-loving plants will not thrive. In my case, I have a distinct gradient of shadiness across the garden, with the east-facing side getting morning sun and the west-facing one being damper and darker.

I wouldn't buy a house without any less a south sse/ssw facing garden, but I love to be out in the sun in the garden.

Size of the garden will determine levels of sun, if the garden is long you may get sun towards the end of the day, but other than that I guess it'd only be at midday.

Garden is very small (25x35ft) so maybe the aspect is a bit more important than I'd originally thought. We've got 2 young children so will probably wait for the house with a west facing garden to be released.

Sadly patience isn't my strong point!

The end of the year isn't so long to wait for what you really want! Good luck!

Stovetheholly I know, the only thing I'm worried about is them putting the prices of the next phase up so that it would be over our budget but they raised he prices massively between the first and second phase so not sure they could go much higher

It'd put me off completely, especially if the property had tiny new build garden surrounded by other properties. You would get very little sun which is a horrible situation to be in if you like being outside.

Suncalc is a good website for calculating shadows.

No I wouldn't buy it, especially if it is small, but I currently have a SW facing garden and am a keen gardener.

It completely depends on what you want the garden for and what time of the day it will be used most. Also think about which rooms of your house will be getting sun and at what time.

Ours faces either NW or NE (can't remember which) and it gets the sun most of the day, it isn't a huge garden but is a reasonable size. I position the plants according to how much sun they need. Evening is when it is less sunny but we manage to sit out to eat as the sun goes down anyway so it doesn't matter.

Previous house was south facing but the garden went around the house rather than being long so we actually got less sun there, and the one before had a huge garden, all round the house but because of neighbouring randomly spaced trees it was difficult to find a place to sit in the sun. We are better off with this one.

Lots of things to take into account.