Big houses, no gardens - nowhere to play.

No large houses getting built near us...just 2 and 3 beds ...occasional 4....no one wants big houses these days round my way

Do you mean in Australia ?
We still have plenty of gardens here in UK all the council houses or housing association seem to have gardens too but obviously there are lots of flats and apartments that don’t
I think it depends where you live, if you live inner city there won’t be perhaps so much in the way of big gardens, but that’s always been so, I haven’t noticed any difference in towns etc
I travel to nearby towns now and then , using my free bus pass and like to sit upstairs to get a good view and there are some nice gardens front and back as you drive through, you see the difference in size in country houses and town houses but the Brits still seem to love their gardens.

I don’t think design and aesthetic planning is one of Australia’s strong points , sadly. It used to be good that way but not any more. A succession of poor councils and even poorer politicians. Just money,money ,money - profits are king.

In the UK the ordinary urban homes does not and did not come with aquarter acre garden. We have twice had rural houses with 1/5 acre gardens and they were HUGE, way beyond normal - and, to be honest, far more than I can ever wanted

New houses these days are lucky to get a garden with more space than you can cover with a table cloth. A friend has recenttly bought a new house, the 4 bedroomed house is 12 ft wide, therefore the garden is only 12 foot wide and about 20 feet long.

We live in London and are lucky to have a yard, many don’t, but thank goodness for green spaces just a few mins away on foot.

I agree the same goes here awful rabbit hutch homes, minimal sized bedrooms with maximum sizes for downstairs all open plan. Tiny outdoors and it really makes me sad.

I think the reason for ‘open plan’ is to combine a kitchen with a living room because there isn’t enough room for both.

When I’ve been to Australia I’ve always been impressed with the number of, and attention given to, the parks and public places. You do have lots of lovely parks, with excellent play facilities, and because your weather is good for most of the year they are very well used nanna8. That probably mitigates against people wanting gardens?

I live rurally and we are currently outside the development envelope. All the houses have huge gardens. However, in the nearest village there has been infilling of new houses so if a large garden can be given a safe access to a road it's sold for development. Farm land within the development envelope has been sold for development and any land that comes up for sale with road access even outside the development envelope gets bought by speculators. Farm land sells at £10k an acre, development land sells for ten times that amount, no wonder new houses have small gardens!

It’s a middle class essential - the garden. Like your own bedroom.

Lots of us were brought up in terraces with a back yard and - horror of horrors - no *front garden*😱

On the whole we all turned into decent, happy people 😬

M0nica

In the UK the ordinary urban homes does not and did not come with aquarter acre garden. We have twice had rural houses with 1/5 acre gardens and they were HUGE, way beyond normal - and, to be honest, far more than I can ever wanted

New houses these days are lucky to get a garden with more space than you can cover with a table cloth. A friend has recenttly bought a new house, the 4 bedroomed house is 12 ft wide, therefore the garden is only 12 foot wide and about 20 feet long.

Yep.....from what I can see.

I think it's a bit off to describe a house as having a garden when one takes a good look at a lot of them and thinks "Great - not! There's room for the clothesline thing, a small garden shed and the garden table/chairs set. That's just about it". You mentally set to one side a teeny tiny little bit of space to be a "garden" per se (ie growing plants/a bit of lawn maybe) - but the Council has also got its eyes on your garden and they want space for a load of recycling containers (never mind the one dustbin - automatically emptied every week). Nope - a container for this, a container for that, another container and they've probably cut down "Dustbin Day" (ie black bag removal) to only once every few weeks. So if you've not got a garage to be the free storage space they want on your property = now what?

End result = you're standing there thinking "What garden have I actually got?!!! ie space for plants/a few trees/etc" and there's probably various houses looking down into your back garden (ie "What happened to back gardens are private - by definition?"). If you haven't got overlooking windows to start with = you've got to keep an eye out for planning applications in case the neighbours want more room but won't move to get it and they go and stick a window or two up in the loft and you don't get anything through the door telling you it's your chance to complain and stop them in advance.

From what I know especially in Melbourne it was a trend to buy a house with a big 'garden' plot and then build a house on it!

My siblings have beautiful gardens in the outskirts of Melbourne but their homes are also pretty old in Australian terms.

Most of the houses on our development had smallish gardens. And most of the people who bought them built conservatories or installed those office shed things, taking up half the garden, and bricked over the rest.

I was never aware of back gardens being private by definition ???? Most of us have houses/offices around the back garden with at least some view of our gardens. My grandparents house 50 years ago had quite a big garden and only half height walls between them. Nothing private about it.

The current trend started around 10 years ago. Until then more space was allowed for gardens and more public space was created between houses. There was a rule that a certain amount of parkland had to be allowed for a certain number of houses erected . That has gone out of the window these days. Excuse the pun, unintended. We are lucky because we have lived here for many years now when things were different. It is an area where you are not allowed to subdivide because of our flora and fauna. Pretty rare and getting rarer. Sad.

nanna8

I don’t think design and aesthetic planning is one of Australia’s strong points , sadly. It used to be good that way but not any more. A succession of poor councils and even poorer politicians. Just money,money ,money - profits are king.

I don’t think it’s just Australia, the same has happened here.
Not far from me are many new houses all around and up to a million pounds, lovely houses with pocket hanky gardens.
Fine if you don’t like gardening or only have a cat, but anyone with a dog and or children have nowhere to run and play.
We still have older houses here with good gardens but all the ones built in the last 15 to 20 years just don’t.

Older houses with gardens are sold to families and the new owners use the garden to install the obligatory open plan kitchen/dining/ living room, plus utility, boot room, playroom, snug and possibly a home office. A small patch of garden is left, paved over, garden furniture and barbecue for entertaining added, nowhere for children or dogs because 'we are so near to the Park', then they sell it because we 'want more land.'

I have noticed that trend here,in fact our houses were probably the last to be built around here with larger gardens.

*^Lots of us were brought up in terraces with a back yard and - horror of horrors - no *front garden^

I grew up in a small semi on an estate and the gardens weren't particularly wide but were very long and backed on to other long gardens so we could barely see the houses in the road behind. It had a long front garden too.
Dad was a very keen gardener.

nanna8

The current trend started around 10 years ago. Until then more space was allowed for gardens and more public space was created between houses. There was a rule that a certain amount of parkland had to be allowed for a certain number of houses erected . That has gone out of the window these days. Excuse the pun, unintended. We are lucky because we have lived here for many years now when things were different. It is an area where you are not allowed to subdivide because of our flora and fauna. Pretty rare and getting rarer. Sad.

Think there's far more things to be sad about .....lots of uk houses don't have a front garden and a small back yard...we are just fine

I had noticed that trend in Australia, nanna8 and a tendency in some areas to build up.

With all the land you have, I do wonder why.

I was being a bit ironic Allira

I had a very happy childhood, in spite of no garden- front or back😬🤣

all the houses round here the new ones are built so close you could open their windows and say hello! there seems to be a trend for a tiny patch barely big enough to put washing out.
going back I would say 30 plus years we went to see a new build re a housing association swap and i could not believe how small the garden was. when you opened the back door or french windows they only just missed the back fence
i am not a gardener but its nice to have somewhere to sit and put washing out

I remember visiting a newly built townhouse for the first time and realising it was the 'starter home' footprint with an extra floor added. I'd walked in and thought how nice & roomy the open plan kitchen was not thinking for a moment that was all the socialising space for a 4 bedroom dwelling!

I think in urban areas houses have less garden space and in big cities many live in flats with no outside space at all, it is therefore only if you move outside built up areas where there is more countryside can you usually be assured a bigger plot.
New builds, however, are advertised as family homes but do not look anywhere near big enough with a pocket hanky sized garden.
Also cannot understand the recent trend to extend into a lovely garden to provide a massive open plan kitchen big enough to run a restaurant from, and so take away space from a beautiful garden for the kids to muck about in. Am not altogether convinced that those installing massive kitchens are even overly fond of cooking.
Have never had a massive kitchen and yet have coped pretty well with family and friends to cook for.

Lathyrus3

It’s a middle class essential - the garden. Like your own bedroom.

Lots of us were brought up in terraces with a back yard and - horror of horrors - no *front garden*😱

On the whole we all turned into decent, happy people 😬

We had many lovely local parks in those days. We didn`t have a garden, just a small back yard in Liverpool. We played out all day and went to the park often, as a family