Big houses, no gardens - nowhere to play.

Dreadwitch

Where do you live that blocks of flats and small houses with small gardens didn't exist until now?

I've lived in small houses with either small or no gardens all my life... A quarter of an acre would be something I (and many others) could only dream of.
You're lucky to have that, most people don't.

Unless you are devoted to gardening, a quarter of an acre is a nightmare, especially when you get older and are not up to disappearing into the garden for 3 hours physically hard work several times a week - or able to pay a gardener to do the work.

That trend has happened here in the UK too. More people means more building which means less space and houses being built smaller, closer together and with little or no garden. On the upside, it means that people like us, who have big gardens, should see the property value rise! Although, when we sold our last house, a semi with a garden of approix 120 feet, lots of people who viewed said the garden was too big for them!

Dreadwitch

Where do you live that blocks of flats and small houses with small gardens didn't exist until now?

I've lived in small houses with either small or no gardens all my life... A quarter of an acre would be something I (and many others) could only dream of.
You're lucky to have that, most people don't.

Australia.

Often blocks in rural areas are one acre or more, often ten acres so people can become more self-sustaining.

Where do you live that blocks of flats and small houses with small gardens didn't exist until now?

I've lived in small houses with either small or no gardens all my life... A quarter of an acre would be something I (and many others) could only dream of.
You're lucky to have that, most people don't.

Like the sound of a quarter of an acre. Quick check later - as I think in square feet = approx 10,900 square feet.

That would do nicely...

We used to live in a village, where all the older houses had good gardens. They then began to build on these big gardens and orchards; all day long banging and drilling, etc etc. That was one of the things that decided us to move. We now live in the inner city. There are double plots on our road (hill) and we all have good sized gardens. We have a small orchard, a large patio, 3 small separate lawns that grown ups can play on! a gravelled area and two wild patches. The strange thing is, on this and the two roads that adjoin us, there are no children any more to play! Despite being on the so-called "walking route" to a primary school, there are very few that actually walk.

Fallingstar

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

We have an open plan of sorts including the kitchen, eating space, family TV space, playroom, and conservatory. Open plan does not necessarily equal small.

Ohnonotagain

We are trying to downsize from large 4 bedroom house with 2 acres. We want a smaller house but with around 1/4 acre garden .
We love gardening and it keeps us fit.

We have been looking for a year and still not found one.

The bit of garden we have enclosed inside a fence is around 1/4 acre. Perfect size for pets, children, veg patch, flowers, table and chairs.

Our land beyond is not fenced. Work yard.

Fallingstar

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

I recently looked into this because I live in a HA house on a new build estate. All of the privately owned ones are open plan but mine, which is the exact same size, has closed rooms with doors. Apparently open plan is more appealing to modern buyers, whereas social housing is built to be more practical and cheaper to heat.

We are trying to downsize from large 4 bedroom house with 2 acres. We want a smaller house but with around 1/4 acre garden .
We love gardening and it keeps us fit.

We have been looking for a year and still not found one.

What do children do when there is no garden and nowhere to play outdoors,though? My lot would have driven me barmy.

It's all very having nearby parks but you have to take them to the park, whereas if you have a garden, you can, if you have room have a swing, perhaps a slide and outdoor toys so you can chuck them out let them go out in the garden without having to watch them every minute.

Parks are good too, of course.

I love the descriptions many of you give, almost takes me to those places! I grew up in London in a semi but it did have a long garden front and back and I loved it. We even had a small fishpond. Here we have a fair number of weeds but the main garden looks good, plenty of colour but we have to water it every night at the moment with 40 plus degree heat!
What do children do when there is no garden and nowhere to play outdoors,though? My lot would have driven me barmy.

Primrose53

My friend has a large garden and was a keen gardener but is getting fed up with all the work now that she has had two knee replacements and the second one is not too good. She also says they never sit and enjoy their garden because it is so large and they always see jobs to do. They have done all they can to make it low maintenance but there’s always lawns to cut, sheds and summerhouses to treat, big pond to clean out, shrubs to prune, fence panels to replace etc etc.

Rewilding is very popular and good for wildlife.

Employ someone to cut the lawn in summer, prune shrubs once in winter.
Looking after a pond:
www.rhs.org.uk/ponds/care

I think it's worth employing a garden person specially for a couple of hours (in my case) a couple of times a year for anything too heavy for me to do (ie removing a shrub that had gone wild and I'd had enough of it doing a garden takeover bid) and pulling up stuff that was too heavy for someone with my strength to pull up.

I've seen one of those robot grass-cutters running itself to and fro recently in a nearby reasonable size garden with a fair amount of lawn and it looked as if it was doing a decent job of it. Not got one myself - because I haven't got a lawn (darn it - but the garden didn't have one and isn't conducive to me putting it in). I've just replaced cracked concrete paving stones with decent ones and added some large decorative beds to plant stuff in (ie once I'd used up all the earth there is planting food in it).

I let things go slightly "wild" anyway and if weeds turn up sprouting out of the previous owners tarmac that's left then I leave the prettier ones to grow (and hide some of the tarmac).

My friend has a large garden and was a keen gardener but is getting fed up with all the work now that she has had two knee replacements and the second one is not too good. She also says they never sit and enjoy their garden because it is so large and they always see jobs to do. They have done all they can to make it low maintenance but there’s always lawns to cut, sheds and summerhouses to treat, big pond to clean out, shrubs to prune, fence panels to replace etc etc.

I live in a rural area where there is so much house building going on, mostly big houses but all with small gardens.

We have lived in many abodes including houses, flats and bungalows but for me a big garden is more important than the house. I love gardening. Our current house is 120 years old and once stood alone but now has houses all around. It was originally two estate cottages with long thin gardens. Now converted to one house the garden is big but manageable, half the size of our last house. I hate having people able to look in my garden fortunately no one can do that easily. When we sold our last house with a massive plot we sold to a fellow gardener who appreciated my years of tender care!

I have often looked longingly and thought "Plus point" to some of those long Council house gardens and mentally started planting fruit trees/putting in a nice arbour type hut in the garden/etc. That is certainly a bonus those houses have and hence I'm gobsmacked with astonishment on "house for sale" details to see so little done with many of them and thought "Whyever not? What a waste to just leave so many of them uncared-for/obviously unloved and sometimes any grass there is shows clearly a family dog has been allowed to "go to the loo" on it and, if one still wanted grass = it would have to come up and be replaced I presume.

My grandmother and her husband had a lovely long garden that was one of the few "static points" in my childhood - as we would stay there for a while in between my fathers Forces postings. Of my limited childhood memories - I do remember looking at that garden and the (pretty okay) park right next door and making mental notes for my own future and thinking "Oh this is what a home looks like. I suppose that's what I'll have when I grow up then". Oh well.......and reminds myself that house needed its kitchen expanded out into the garden (as it was one of those too small to be feasible kitchens) and it's probably had that done over the years. But it would still have been a very reasonable garden.

I never did see House no. 5 (if I've counted right) that erstwhile brother got/still has. But - the estate agent details duly showed a really long garden (complete with its privacy from what I could see) and even the front garden was something a lot would be happy with as a back garden. There was a free offer of one of those house developers websites a bit back - and so checking out showed there was a sizable strip of scrap land to one side of the back garden - and it was very clear he'd nicked that to add to his own garden too!!!!! I very much doubt he bought it in the proper way to get it. I've got an equivalent strip by mine - but left it be (as it's not mine).

So - yep....big gardens equal a potential mini orchard to me, an arbour, "beds" to grow in #sighs and there is a bit of room spare the Council can grab at for all their waste containers they like storing in our homes and build a nice barrier around them to hide them.

That was a lot of what moving across country was about - to swop from a house straight on the street and with a teeny little backyard that was heavily overlooked and I had put a garden table and chairs out there and was trying to use it to sit out when I decided - but was very very conscious there were several houses just feet away that could look straight down into my yard as easily as can be - and I did notice that happening sometimes (in hindsight - maybe I should have just stuck two fingers up whenever I spotted that....oh well and I was too polite to "ask" them to stop looking in to my private space). So I never did sit out there in the event - whilst mentally boarding up their windows wistfully - so that I could have done.

Lathyrus Our house hunt has always been for the house with the small garden. We have had two rural properties that came with large gardens, measured in fractions of an acre. 2 good sized gardens, all four bought because we could not find what we wanted with a small garden. But we have also had 2 easily managed gardens, not small, but not needing more than an occasional grass cut and our current one, where I haveal;ready built a large patio, intend to extend thecar parking area and what is left will make a nice small suntrap garden - oh and we do not have a front garden.

keepingquiet yes we had a lawn at the front too with path to front door that nobody ever used although my Mum used to polish the brass knob and letterbox regularly.

Like you we also had a wide area to the side which was shingle and full of hollyhocks which looked beautiful. In later years it became a drive to a garage when we finally got a car.

I agree with the other poster who says not everybody wants a large garden nowadays but back then large gardens for council houses was the norm as it wasn’t long after the war and people were encouraged to grow their own, keep chickens etc. For us it was essential as Dad grew all our veg and salad stuff and summer fruits which we could not have afforded to buy.

I was poking fun Monica( obviously very badly) at the middle class horror of houses with just a small garden and what a dreadful sign of the times that is.
My point was that many, many people in the past ( not just nowadays) grew up without gardens at all.

The big garden with a three bed semi was pretty much a 1920/30s thing for the aspiring, in the Garden Towns era.

Small houses with not much more than a patch aren't the dreadful new disaster that some seem to think. Up until a hundred years ago that was the standard.

Ok, it was a bit of an argument. I do sometimes find the middle class presumption of “what we had is the right thing to have” a bit trying…….

Primrose53

I was brought up in a large 3 bed council house with a massive garden. All these houses were really well built in the 50s. The rooms were a good size with plenty of windows and light. The design of these houses can be seen all over our county and they all have very large gardens. We had lawned area, big veggie plot, garden shed, chicken coop, flower borders etc. and in later years, a garage. Our garden was a delight as my parents really looked after it.

Same here- although ours had four bedrooms to accomodate our large family.

Gardens were large then because a lot of people treated them like plots for growing their own veg, keeping chickens etc. I know my parents did- but the chickens soon went even if the veg garden was there for years.
We grew potatoes, cabbages, lettuce etc no we weren't self-sufficent but we did grow a lot of our own stuff and made very good use of our back and front gardens and even the patch at the side that eventually became a drive-way...

Plenty of people don’t want a big garden nowadays. With both partners working FT they don’t have enough time to garden traditionally, an easy-care bit of outdoors is what they want. Some people pay a huge amount of money to live in a penthouse suite, with a balcony and no garden at all!

We had gardens of various sizes for our children, though none were enormous. They played outside as kids did and wandered the local woods and so on. Our previous house, we had about a third of an acre but as it was on a hillside, it was terraced and steep and not that accessible. We were relieved when we moved here as this (new build) garden is much smaller but much more accessible and it’s flat so more usable.

I was somewhat concerned about being overlooked after our more rural home but it doesn’t bother me now. No one spends all day in their bedrooms staring at us and lots of people have put up double-fencing for more privacy. I certainly hear neighbourhood children playing outside in the summer and the nearby playpark is also popular.

People need to live somewhere, not everyone wants a huge garden and I think it’s good that, money permitting, we have a selection of different properties to choose from.

Lathyrus3

I was being a bit ironic Allira

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

😀

I was brought up in a large 3 bed council house with a massive garden. All these houses were really well built in the 50s. The rooms were a good size with plenty of windows and light. The design of these houses can be seen all over our county and they all have very large gardens. We had lawned area, big veggie plot, garden shed, chicken coop, flower borders etc. and in later years, a garage. Our garden was a delight as my parents really looked after it.

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 😬

I am not sure the point you are making. You seem to be making an argument where no one is arguing.

It is not correct, anyway. What about all those well off families living in mansion flats in big cities.

Classwise, I am non-binary and I lived in nearly 20 different addresses in my childhood. Around half had gardens and half hadn't and most were rented.

But what all this has to do with gardens and whether people are decent happy people, I have no idea. Lots of really nasty people live in houses with gardens.