Would you buy a house with a north facing garden?

snowscreamer

We have a north / NW facing garden - bought our house in a March - we were wondering if it would be an issue but loved the house so much that it became insignificant. To our surprise and delight, this summer our patio behind the house (along with most of the rest of of our garden) has had the sun for up to 12 hours a day. So actually it's turned out to be a lovely garden and not a problem at all!

woodworm001

I'd guess the only people that say no to this have small gardens. We have a north facing garden and it's in sunlight most of the day though there is a few feet (5?) at the back that only gets a few hours.

We sit out side past 9pm in summer and have light.

duchy

Depends why you want a garden and your life style.

If you have or plan kids sunshine in the day matters -and north is OK - if you work all day then sun on the garden until just before you get home may be a deal breaker.

woodworm001

duchy wrote: »

Depends why you want a garden and your life style.

If you have or plan kids sunshine in the day matters -and north is OK - if you work all day then sun on the garden until just before you get home may be a deal breaker.

That depends on the size of the garden though. We have no children and my wife often works until 8pm, but we can still enjoy a g&t in the garden when she gets home if we like.

Our garden is around 70 feet long and around 20 feet wide.

horngkai

I live in a terraced 2.5 storey townhouse with north facing garden measuring 5m wide by 10m long. During Spring/summer/early autumn, I get sun pretty much all day where only during morning and noon that the first 1-2m are in the shade. Other than that, it is always sunny, especially in the evening when the sun hit every spot of the garden.

m_13

Our garden is east facing. We get sun on the back of the house and the garden in the morning and then sun on part of the back garden and the front of the house in the evening. Our bedroom has windows at the front and the back so we get morning and evening sun (same for the lounge). Our house has sea views from the back of the house. The houses on the opposite side of the road can only see the sea from their attic rooms. When it came to the orientation of the garden we were fa more interested in being able to see the sea (and France) from our windows.

Edited to add that there's a great website http://googlecompass.com where you can overlay a compass over Google maps (including hybrid and satellite maps) and can work out the orientation of a house before viewing it.

In_For_A_Penny_2

I had a north facing garden in the Sussex that got a lot more sun than the south facing garden we had in Scotland!

united4ever

m_13 wrote: »

Our garden is east facing. We get sun on the back of the house and the garden in the morning and then sun on part of the back garden and the front of the house in the evening. Our bedroom has windows at the front and the back so we get morning and evening sun (same for the lounge). Our house has sea views from the back of the house. The houses on the opposite side of the road can only see the sea from their attic rooms. When it came to the orientation of the garden we were fa more interested in being able to see the sea (and France) from our windows.

Edited to add that there's a great website http://googlecompass.com where you can overlay a compass over Google maps (including hybrid and satellite maps) and can work out the orientation of a house before viewing it.

Also try http://suncalc.net


shows how much sun you'll get for different times of day and different times of year.

Cissi

50% of gardens are facing either North, East or some combination of the two. People do buy them - fact. It's all a question of price. All else being equal, the value of the house will be lower than for an identical house with a South-facing garden. It's all a question of compromise - if the houses that you can afford all have North/East-facing gardens and this isn't something you're prepared to accept, are you willing to give up a bedroom instead? Or to live by a busy main road? Or with a garden backing onto a railway line? Etc etc.


Like most people, we made some compromises when buying our (hopefully "forever") family home. After searching for four years, we found a large, detached, period house in a great location in South West London that we managed to scrape in within our budget (just) - and yes, it's on a fairly busy road, with a North-facing garden. Best decision we ever made - we have a large, mature front garden that shields us from most of the traffic noise, a major park just across the road, and a garden that gets the sun until late in the evening, as we're on a corner with no immediate neighbour to the West. And we have buses to two different main town centres practically on our doorstep (plus Heathrow) - great once our children are old enough to want a bit of independence. All this to say that what may not look great on paper turned out to tick all our major boxes once we looked a bit more closely at it - and 5 years down the road we thank our lucky stars as we still haven't seen anything on the market that would remotely rival this in our eyes

flora48

It is the whole package that has to be considered. I lived house with a north facing back garden for 25 years. The design was such that each room had a south facing window except the kitchen and bathroom, so I always had the light on in the kitchen.

The upside was fantastic views, a big enough front garden to catch the sun in reasonable privacy and an individual build.

As for plants, I came to love ferns, they grow quickly, only need cutting back once a year and give tremendous ground cover.