Garden direction?

[Nutellaontoast19]

If you had a choice between South East, South West or North East which would you choose. Gardens are not long ones.

Are you a morning or evening person?

my garden faces north east. I can only grow shade plants except at the far end. but it is cooler in summer than having a south facing garden.

but for a small house, I'd probably go for south west, to get the evening sun.

I’m more of an evening person. The house is quite big but garden is wider than it is long if that makes sense.

South west

South west hands down

South west unless it meant significantly more money, or major compromise on the house itself. The orientation of the house is pretty far down my list of priorities.

South west

South West

We had a North East garden and did absolutely nothing with it despite being keen gardeners. It always felt gloomy.

South west, no doubt. There's nothing like the sun coming into the garden in the evenings.

South West

So south east wouldn’t get evening sun?

Not if you have a tall house and short garden, especially if your neighbouring houses are also tall. We have this and SSE garden and don’t get evening sun except on a tiny patch of fence!

Although we do have a lovely sunny kitchen in the mornings which helps me wake up (I am not a morning person at all!)

It depends where in the country you are. If you are in London or the south east you may prefer north facing. I can't bear going in my south facing garden (SSE) in hot weather and many plants died last year despite being watered every day.

It really depends what surrounds you. We have a NE garden which is often cited as the worst possible orientation. However, we have no buildings overlooking and shading us, and only a few tall trees on a higher railway bank about ten metres from our rear boundary fence.

We get the morning sun, which makes the kitchen lovely and bright in the morning. As the sun moves around in the summer our deck moves into the shade but the lawn remains in full sun most of the day. We then get lovely evening sun shining onto the side of the house. We have recently opened up the back of the house with a run of bifolds and a Velux, and it stays beautifully cool even in the very hot weather. The same configuration and amount of glass would be unbearably hot in a SE orientation.

South west...evening sun. It’s easier to create shade than create light.