Have you ever moved house for a garden?

:D I live in central Bristol... I love my little house and it's not a bad area. But the garden is so small. We went for a walk in the countryside yesterday and I have big green eyed garden envy...

I know i know... size isn't everything! Ah one day I hope to have a big garden though... got home and googled right move and nearly fell of my chair at the prices! I'm 100 on waiting for allotment too! Bah!

My husband is keeping his head down and hoping I get back to my normal equilibrium but have you ever moved for a bigger garden, with other considerations of course! :WINK1:

 

Hi WolfieKate

I am clear that our next house will

(a) have a decent sized garden

and

(b) have somewhere to put the car far away from the darling little street children.

I should be willing to put up with a lot of other things being less than perfect to achieve this goal. OH, however, is of the opinion that now that we have an expensive new roof and the ceilings don't come down every time we have a heavy shower (ah! the joys of period houses!) and have provided our son with his own wash facilities so that he doesn't have an excuse to trash ours, we should stay put for a bit. But I am still working on things.

 

We are trying to do this at the moment! Well actually my husband thinks the move is to be closer to his work, have a bit more space etc etc all carefully "planted" by me . I don't care that it means moving from a nice warm manageable house to a drafty money pit with 2 small children- there's enough room for a potager!.. there's also a big pond though. hmmm small children and pond....

B

 

We bought the house we are in now FOR and BECAUSE of the size of the property and the location. The house itself is just a plain house which we continue to fix up. Our house is on a very quiet street, sits back on a long driveway, woods all around and has 2 1/2 acreas with it. So my gardens are huge and lots of them.

 

In short yes. We've been here 20 years and when we bought it it had a really nice garden already. The lovely couple who sold the house to us were retired and obviously spent a lot of time and effort in the garden. It was a credit to them, I liked it straight away. it's a lot different now though than it was having replaced plants, shrubs and redesigned it.
Saying that there's a large end terraced property nearby with a qite small garden to the front and side which is walled. Whoever owns it has done a faboulous job with it and has a wonderful selection of plants and shrubs (especially their floribunda roses) So even small plots can be made very nice Kate in time.

 

We went the opposite way as our previous garden was becoming difficult to manage as well as the swimming pool costing a fortune to heat and to constantly need cleaning because it collected all the dead leaves for around and about.
Our current garden is a little on the small side but I still look after it and enjoy changing plantings/etc......

 

We are moving because we don't really have much of a garden but at the moment we can't find what we want so we are going into rented till we find a bungalow with a decent (south or west facing) garden.

 

We did much the same, we've been here for 23 years now after buying the property from an older couple who had obviously looked after the house and garden very well.
The size of the garden was an important factor in our decision to buy, we specified 'large garden' when contacting estate agents, their interpretation of the word 'large' was, in some cases, a little imaginative to say the least!
If you do buy a house for the garden as we did, the one piece of advice I would offer is to check the soil type. We've been quite happy here over the years, but the soil is very light and sandy, which combined with the fact that we're in the driest part of the country means there are limitations to what I can grow.
You only have to travel 2 or 3 miles from here and the soil type changes to a heavier, more fertile type. In retrospect we should have taken this into account when moving, but hey ho, hindsight and all that.

 

We moved here a couple of months ago in spite of the garden! See: I'm back - beside the seaside! It slopes up at an alarming 1 in 25 in places and has 39 steps to the top.

But, there are views of the sea from the top and the beach is only a five minute walk away. Plus, there's some nice established planting, two small veg patches, netted against the rabbits, and my first greenhouse.

We love the house and the location and, although we didn't move just for it, the garden too.

Chris

 

I have the opposite problem - I will not be able to move due to excessive emotional attachment to my little babies growing outside in the plot. How could I abandon them? How could I not want to see them grwo up properly. What if a nasty person came and dug them all up?
There are only two solutions: Sell to some one who cares about them as much as me and will let me come back and visit them. Or. Dig them all up and take them with me.

This last one means I could only move house during the winter. They could all be put to bed on the allotment for that season if I have enough warning. I couldn't bear to dismantle or abandon my summer garden, though.

Anyone want to buy a semi with a nice garden?

 

Ha ha- this is what I'm wondering. I'm going for preemptive propagation of most stuff with blatant digging up and carrying off of my favorites...

 

To get back on track, garden space was and will be a major consideration in buying a house. What aspect, how much land, existence of mature plants/trees, privacy, greenhouse, etc. I think of it as a sculpture -I look at a bleak and unprepossessing space and start planning what green haven could be released from it!

I've got a south-facing corner plot and my semi is joined on to the other house on the north side so I get sun into the garden and house all day from either the east, south or west. I'd worked all this out before buying the house. I'd never buy a semi joined the opposite way, it would be grim.

Having said that, almost any space has got the potential to make an attractive garden. I'll also be looking at houses that have got good sheds for workshop/studio space as I certainly won't be able to afford to build one.

 

Good idea, I think you can take anything as long as it is clearly stated in the inventory what will be left.

 

Oops - lots of folk on this thread. It's my birthday today and I am trying to work out my new bread making machine!

DH has told me to sit tight for one year and we'll review. :D 7 years in current house and I do enjoy the ease of a modern house but not the lack of character! And the garden is just feeling a tad cramped now I share it with a bike shed, a wendy house, a seesaw and a trampoline!! Kids! My pond is the smallest liner we could find and actually though I am proud of it... it is small!!! No ones fallen in it yet.

In my ideal world I would have a huge garden and a small easy to maintain house... ho hum! better keep saving...

 

I would definitely take anything I felt was important or take cuttings. I have a lot of pots and will probably need a separate removal van for them if we do move one day! PLus I have plants given to me by people who have died and I would have to try and move some...

More to this than I thought..!! We invest so much spiritually in a garden. We leave a lot behind when we move. But I would also see it as a fresh canvas. One day...