How important is having a decent garden?

[LeafyYork]

Hello,

We're a newly married couple looking to upsize and move area to start a family (we're not parents yet). Our house is on the market and we're viewing houses to buy.

We've completely fallen in love with a house that is perfect in lots of ways, but it only has a small courtyard garden, no lawn. It is, however, a 20 second walk from a beautiful 30 acre park which has lots of biodiversity and lovely walks.

So my question to you as parents is, how important is it to have a large, green garden rather than a courtyard? The courtyard is big enough for an outdoor table and some shrubs in pots. Children could play out there, but not really run around.

I'd hope the large park nearby would encourage us to get outdoors and see more nature than we would in a garden, but maybe I'm being naive.

I'd always pictured my children running around in the garden on a sunny evening and having a swing set. Any thoughts?

It was important for us. We have 3DC and with our first 2DC we had actually had a large garden but it was unusable as do water logged and muddy. We spent a bit to get it landscaped and usable and honestly the difference is huge. They are out playing all the time (weather permitting) and even our own mental health looking out the window and it looks nice is such a diff

Also it's much easier to just open the door and let them run around in the safety of your visibility whilst you potter around. The thought of getting ready to go to the park all the time would be short lived for us

Not important at all. Gardens are a lot of work, the set up you describe sounds ideal.

Plenty of people raise kids without a garden. Its how important it is to you not other people you want to think about. We just have a yard but my kids generally played in the back lane with their friends and the yard was big enough for a small paddling pool and picnic blanket when they were really small.

Is there no front garden either?

for me it’s very important to have a garden, particularly with small children

Very important to us. DKs then the DGKs, animals,swings, slide,Wendy house. Led them to want a little bit of their own garden.

Your children don't meet other children in their own garden!
We have a tiny back garden- it does have grass but it's v small (terraced house). We're lucky to have a small park at the top of the road. I used to take a coffee up with me when my DCs needed supervising, but as they got older they could play out there alone.
They met lots of local children- and I met lots of local parents. Yes, it would have been nice to have a big garden as well as the park.... but there were advantages in being out and about in the community.
Our small garden was still fine for a paddling pool in summer, eating outdoors in warm weather, we even had a trampoline at one stage... but there wasn't much room for anything else!

Gardens are not just for the children playing; when they get a bit older they want a dog, cat, rabbits, guinea pigs etc. It's lovely to have a garden big enough to have hutches and runs and somewhere for the dog to pee, as well as places for the kids to play.

I mean, maybe your kids might not want pets. But it's nice to have the choice and not be saying no to them all the time about animals because there's nowhere to put them.

It was important to us, and I agree with pp who said 'you open your doors and they can play out'.

Our kids spent huge amounts of time in our garden, kicking a ball around, climbing trees, making dens. Once they were past the littlies stage I didn't have to keep an eye on them at all and could get on with whatever I was doing. I couldn't imagine having to find the time at weekends/holidays to go off to the park for a couple of hours with a 9 year old, yet they were happy playing in the garden for that amount of time (often as a minimum).

Also, children don't really necessarily want 'lovely walks'. They want to play.

Children love a garden, somewhere to dig and plant. Have pets, like rabbits or have a tent.

We went through this OP, moving from large garden house to small garden but v close to the beach.

We are v happy with our much easier to maintain garden which gets a lot of afternoon sun and views of nature. The huge lawn we had before felt suburban, but our small garden has many birds etc, we can sit out and enjoy food, crafts etc in the garden. We also have a dog so we are out daily walking and spend heaps of time at local park and beach.

so overall I think it’s much better in your situation to live in a lovely inviting enjoyable small outdoor space with access to large park than a forgotten hassle of a huge garden and no other kids to play with on your own swings…

My children were young 20+ years ago, our garden was large - started with a swing and slide set - brilliant, children played a lot with it, and their friends came and played as well

Then we had a large trampoline, again a child magnet, but I was happy having lots of friends around (except when the son and his friends moved it to the front of the house and started water bombing the cars driving down the road!)

And then there was the goal net - son and dog and friends spent many hours playing football

So, all in all it was lovely to have had such a garden, safe for the family and has given me lots of happy memories

We have a big garden but our young children have always preferred going to the park! Even when they do play in it, they want us there with them.

I would go for the house near a park!

It was very important for us. We moved from a four bedroom city terrace to a three bedroom suburban semi and went from a tiny garden to a long garden with fruit trees at the end when the DC were 3 and 6. Loved that they could be in the garden unsupervised while I was cooking/ washing up etc. and could look out of the window to see them. DD2 especially loved the garden and spent a lot of time climbing the trees or on the swing from the tree. We hung a monkey bar too and hoops and she spent so much time hanging upside down we thought she was perhaps a bat in a previous life...

It's good to have some outdoor space but it sounds like you have that.

As long as you are happy to go and supervise at the park regularly you really don't need a big space.

Very important, I can’t chuck kids out in 30 acres of parkland, the garden (about an acre) is invaluable, they both learned to ride bikes easily as they could practice all day in the summer.

You can put a water table and a sand pit and a paddling pool outside in a small courtyard garden although you might want to put down something to protect the kids if they fall.

So you can use the space perfectly well.

Having a garden is massively important to us. We purposely bought a house with lots of potential for the gardens - front and back.

My boys love being outdoors. The handy aspect of having a garden is that you don't have to get ready, pack snacks and all the usual accompaniments for a trip out.

For me, parks can get samey and can be often full of rogue dogs. Not for me. So by default it's surely a less enjoyable experience for my kids - although I do try!

Equally, children make do. We have an outdoor tap and that alone is entertainment for them for hours during the summer months. Lots of mud pies, making 'potions', water guns etc.

Not v important for us, especially as weather often crap here.

It's nice to be able to have bbqs and we do have a trampoline and a small inflatable pool that comes out in summer.

However, we have to consider lawn mowing, weeding and gardening.

So I'd be happy with the park as an option instead.

We had a paved yard and it was fab as they could use it in all weathers. Used the local playgrounds and parks.

Unless your garden is HUGE they soon get too big/old to play footie in it or energetic games so you still end up trekking to the nearest park IME

We have a small (5m x 4m) courtyard garden with a 4yo and a 1yo, and it's fine.
We're also about a 30 second walk from a playground, and have several other playgrounds, parks, forests, streams etc within about 10 minutes drive.
In the garden we have a flowerbed and some pots, and we grow herbs and vegetables. We have a firepit and nice lighting, and a table and chairs, so we regularly cook and eat outside between about March and October. The kids play out there independently with a mud kitchen, water / sand table, teepee, chalk, bubbles etc, and we go to the local parks regularly too.
Various neighbours with identical gardens have chickens, cats, and rabbits so it definitely doesn't preclude having pets.
FWIW we moved here when our eldest was 2 from a house with a MASSIVE garden, and it's made no difference at all to how much time we spend outside / in the garden.
We aim to spend 1000 hours outside every year, and usually get pretty close. A small garden is what you make of it, but it definitely doesn't mean you'll end up stuck inside all the time!

We have a courtyard garden and the dcs love it for a short play in the afternoon in the summer, but for a proper play we'll go to the 400 acre park nearby or visit a destination playground, there are loads with enormous structures that you wouldn't get in anyone's garden. Generally we go out every day anyway as we like doing different things around town so the idea of having to get ready is normal for us, we actually do a packed lunch every night for non-school days and get the buggy and coats all set up the night before.

I do dream of having one big enough to house its own proper playground but to afford that, we'd have to move out of central London or obtain Oligarch-type wealth.

It is to us..but my DH was originally a landscape gardner, so enjoys growing plants. I am always outside during summer months, after work, breakfast ect i always prefer to be sat outside, and stargazing at night.

We have a small garden but we've put down a little patch of grass for LO to play on, and couple flowerbeds. So made it as functional as possible and im happy with that, as realisticly with work we couldnt manage a big garden even if we could afford one.

If your not overly bothered a courtyard you can make really pretty and LO can still get fresh air between running at the park, its a lot of extra work if your not fussed either way :)

I really think it depends on both your children and how relaxed you end up being as a parent.

I used to disappear down the garden as a child well before I would have been allowed out to play in a park on my own - probably from the age of 6 or so. Building fairy gardens, doing "archeology" and so on. BUT from the age of about 9 I was allowed to disappear into the woodland at the back of the houses a few doors down, where I had a den (including tin of biscuits for the true secret seven experience) and play there for hours.

If that's the sort of place it will and the sort of parents you anticipate being (no judgement in either direction) then there's only a few years between "needs supervision even in the garden" and "no longer needs supervision" in which case you might not think that is worth it.

If you think it's not the sort of area where they could go off alone, or you think they could be unsupervised in a garden earlier (our garden had access to a busy road which limited my freedom before that) then the length of time might be great enough that you would make a different decision.

It would also depend on the shape and facing of the courtyard - will it ever get any sun? Does it have enough room to store bikes/whatever other stuff you need? Presumably shading it wouldn't be too hard if it's small, but it's the counterpart to the no sun problem. Can you get to it from the street? Etc etc.

Garden was always really important for me, having BBQ's, picnics, playing football, growing some strawberries and raspberries, letting the dogs out for a wee etc. Having to take the kids to the park every time you want to be outside isn't the same for me at all.