North facing garden?

[Deleted User]

Can I have thoughts on buying a semi with a northerly back garden please? It has trees at the bottom of the garden and a conservatory. I'm seeing it tonight at 6pm for the first time. In which months will it have most and least shade? Would you consider such a garden?

lostinrates

I would consider a north facong garden, but much of how much the north facing would be a problem depends on the size of it.

Davesnave

Glassannie wrote: »

Would you consider such a garden?

It would depend how long the garden was and the nature of the surroundings

Where I used to live, the rear 100' garden was south facing, but the presence of houses behind meant planting trees for privacy. This made some of the garden quite shady, though the back of the house remained sunny.

Gradually, we came to realise that our tree planting gave us a wider range of environments, expanding the possibilities for growing. Because the trees were mid-way across the garden, we still had a sunny area beyond them, which was good for veg and greenhouse growing.

Our friends across the road had a north facing plot. Their rear rooms were shady, but because of the garden's length, the trees across it in a similar position to ours, didn't shade the far end. They had a wall there about 10' high which was fabulous for vines and similar fruit. So, their garden was just as good and varied as ours, despite facing north.

When we moved, we sectioned off the lower third of the garden and kept it, having realised that the houses behind us had little sun in their short, north-facing 15' gardens. That's an entirely different scenario. Anyway, it's just enabled us to sell the land to those properties at a decent price. Everyone's a winner!

kkgree1

I have a north-facing rear garden and as per previous poster, it does depend how large the garden is.

Ours is almost 100ft in length. The bottom of the garden gets the morning sun whereas the patio gets evening sun.

It does affect planting but I haven't found any downsides so far.

I would also add that it will affect the conservatory in that it will be quite cold in the winter (we have extra heating in there). It's still warm in there in the summer (even during the last few weeks!). I've come to the conclusion that I wouldn't buy a house with a south-facing conservatory as it must be like a sauna! :rotfl: