garden for kids - how important

scotboy82

Hi

Buying a first floor two bed maisonette, really nice inside, but it doesn't have a garden. We are however about 400 yards from a nice park.

Me and my wife are looking to start a family soon and just wanted to know if anyone can share their experiences of how important a garden is for young kids.

Have those that have kids with who own a house with a garden found it invaluable?

Or those that have kids who have a flat/house without a garden how have you found it?

Thanks

Fourcandles_3

Access to outside space is important, wether that is a park or garden doesn't really matter. I'd worry more about lugging the buggy up personally.

A garden is a bonus, not essential as long as you are the sort of person who would take kids out. Sadly some parents are not.

adr0ck

i would have to have a garden with kids

probably ok not to have a garden upto age 1, but when their moving about I think its a must

good luck

Gingernutmeg

I don't have kids, but I do think outside space is important, if only for drying clothes in the summer!

moneysavinmonkey

hi there. i don't have kids but previously lived in a top floor flat that had not garden but we were literally spitting distance to a hugemungous (sp!) park so i thought i would share my experience.

When we moved in we thought it would be great and for somethings it was really nice, like to go for an evening walk, but really didn't use it as much as we thought. You can't really just pop out for a sit down or to relax as you have to cart all your stuff with you and back again - i imagine if you have children you have even more stuff! so many things you can't do in a park as well like just sit in peace, have a bbq, have a paddling pool, hang your washing up, have friends round, have a glass of wine of an evening, grow veggies or flowers etc. If anything to us having the park was like taunting us as we wanted some outdoor space of our own!

When the landlord gave us notice, the top of our list was a garden no matter how small.

Just my opinion but after living in a flat I would never live anywhere again without outdoor space... i think if i was planning on having kids it would be even more important to me.

d900

only time me or any of my friends/family go in the garden is to cut the grass...

amandajp_2

I don't have children but I would think the problem with a park rather than a garden is that when they are old enough to play outside in the garden on their own they wouldn't be able to as you wouldn't want to leave them in a park unsupervised whereas you might in your own garden. It depends how long you expect to be living there and thus how old any children you have will be whilst living there.

neverdespairgirl

We have a 2 year old son, and live in a flat in central London. It's 2nd floor, but there is a (tiny) lift, so we're OK with the pushchair and shopping.

We are 20 seconds away from a garden square, and 5 minutes away from a large children's park, with swings, slides, tennis courts, animals, etc.

We are fine with this. Our son goes to the park pretty much every day, at weekends with us, during the week with his nanny. We spend a lot of evenings in the square, and someone else does all the work!

inmypocketnottheirs

Hmmm, in an ideal world, a garden would be preferable. Especially from the point of view kids need some unsupervised space. When I say unsupervised, I mean more from the point of view a safe haven in which they think they are unsupervised, when of course, in reality, they are supervised.

bylromarha

If you can find an equivalent flat that does have a garden for the same or a bit more money, then I'd go for that.

We bought this house in June 2006, the garden was unusable until July 2007. A large park is across the road. We did use it, but it just wasn't the same as having your own space where you can run about with a choice of toys. Boy, did the boy feel cooped up at times!

If you can have outside space, it's a godsend at times when they need to let off steam, but you can't go out of the house. Plus all their outside toys are there and they can happily switch between toys as the mood takes them.

My son actively used the garden a lot since he started walking confidently at age 1. Mind you, even if you fell pregnant the day you moved in, that would still be 1yr and 9m away.

scope

Personally I would never buy a house/flat without a private garden, with small kids its great to send them out into the garden and not have to worry about them. Having a park near by is nice, but it means you have to go with them (up to a certain age, anyway)..