East facing garden??

Boardiegirl

We are considering buying a house but it has an east facing garden, plus when we viewed at 9.15am it was half shaded by the property behind it.
we are not the bbq kind and apparently we should get garden sun during the morning; (possibly into the afternoon??).
but I’ve seen people saying they’d never buy a property with an east facing garden, takes days to dry washing, back rooms are always cold etc etc.
Help! Is all that really true? I hate dark rooms. Plus how much would the house behind us affect our sun?
all replies welcomed, good or bad!! 

I’m in South Wales UK.

Marvel1

I think I'm east facing - at least when I look at the M4 - my garden is east, and I get Sun all day, I even managed 4 loads of washing Saturday just gone.  The houses opposite don't seem to obstruct but are not close enough.

Thrugelmir

How long is the garden?  What obstructions are there to the sun, trees, other buildings etc?  My garden is NW facing and enjoys sun in some part of it all day long. Likewise having shade is useful too. 

olgadapolga

My garden is east-facing and has sun for most of the day, until the sun gets low enough for the house to put the garden into shade. The neighbours' houses aren't an issue as they are far enough away not to cast shadows over my garden.

My washing line is at a point furthest away from the house and I can get through all of my washing (two adults, two teenage boys and an eight-year old) in a day.

The back rooms don't get particularly cold compared to the front, nor particularly dark. The garden tends to get cold when in the shade though.

JGB1955

Our garden is east facing.  It has full morning sun - lovely for breakfast on the patio.  At 13:20 the patio now has a 50cm band of shadow, which will creep up the garden as the day goes on.  The far end of the garden (where we have some decking) is in full sun from about 11:00 until it gets dark - we have no neighbours to the north side of our garden, otherwise they might block the evening sun.

ic

Install the app "suns path", you'll be able to stand in the garden of any property, point your phone at the sky and trace where the sun is at different times of the year - so you'll be able to figure out which buildings or trees might cast shadows and where.  It depends what is to the south of the garden, but you certainly won't enjoy sun early evening as your own house would cast the shadow.

Doozergirl

It is about what is around you and the size of your garden more than the position of the sun.  

Our garden is east facing.  We get full morning sun in the rooms at the back and full evening sun in the rooms at the front of the house.  It's a bit silly to suggest that a house is going to be dark all day, because the sun moves through a full 180 degrees during summer.  

A house with a full South facing garden is going to end up with the North side in shade all day, but you'd probably want respite from the full sun in the summer!  

Our patio will go in the north west corner of our garden, because that gets the sun longest.  We have a short garden of only 10m and the house is only 5.5m high.    We have the sun all day from sunrise.  This weekend we lost the sun at about 6pm.  If we had a longer garden, we'd obviously get it all day.  

It's always dependent on the house and its surroundings, not just the direction it faces.  

wjr4

My living room is at the back of the house and I have an east facing garden, the room is always very cold! My garden always has the sun but I’m semi-detached and the sun goes through the driveway luckily! I do miss my south facing garden though! 

wjr4

However, forgot to add that the house I’m joined to gets hardly any sun as my house blocks it! 

AdrianC

There is no magic about which way a garden "faces". It's purely and simply where's overshadowed by what.

You know the basics. The sun is always south of us in the UK - sometimes a very long way, so low in the sky, sometimes not so far, so high in the sky. It rises in the east, it sets in the west.

Yes, a house provides one source of a big shadow. But so do other houses and buildings, trees, whatever...

youth_leader

The only thing to be careful of in an east facing garden, according to my gardening book, is frost on certain shrub flower buds, like camellias.  Easily avoided by protecting when frost is predicted.