You’ve bought your new-build home and you are now the proud owner of a garden. How will you look after it? What should you plant? How much should you pave or use as a patio? Whichever way you hope to use your space outside, we’ve put together some garden ideas for your new-build home. Read more about them here.
Blank canvas
Much like the house itself, the garden of a new-build home is like a blank canvas, being typically just laid to lawn. There are no borders, no plants, and sometimes there might not be any specific area designed for sitting, such as a patio. The garden you will get will offer a lot of scope for you to put your own stamp on it.
However, before you do start designing your garden it pays to familiarise yourself with a few important aspects. For example, how much sun does your garden get? How does the garden cope after heavy rainfall? What is the soil like beneath the turf? If you do have some features such as fencing or a patio area, will they work with the style of garden you are hoping for?
Be sustainable and grow your own
There’s never been a better time to be self-sufficient and grow some of your own fruit and vegetables. By doing so in your new garden, you’ll also be doing your bit to help the environment. You don’t need masses of space to grow your own fruits and vegetables. The only thing to look out for with a new-build is the soil quality. Unfortunately, some gardens tend to have a clay subsoil which doesn’t drain too well. There are steps you can take to improve the soil quality, which are easy and not overly expensive.
In the meantime, consider growing fruits and vegetables in raised beds or large pots. Potatoes can even be grown in large plastic containers if you have any spare. Some fruit plants are exceptionally easy to tend and care for, such as rhubarb and raspberries, which will bring you fruit year after year. Just think of the money you’ll save and the pollinators you’ll attract.
Choose easy to maintain plants
To keep your garden looking great and at the same time reducing any regular maintenance effort, then choose to stock your garden with perennials. These come back year after year. There are options for some which flower at different times during the year too, so you can attract the bees. Just beware of anything which grows too big – you should always check the plant label for the maximum height and width the plant will grow to. If you do choose anything which does grow to a large height, then regular pruning or a hard cut back once a year should see it right.
There are a wealth of flowering shrubs which are low maintenance, too. And with these you can bring a flurry of colour to your borders, while welcoming bees and butterflies. Fuchsias, for example, are hardy plants of which there are many varieties and colours. They perform nicely in well-drained soil and only need a water in the summer months. Roses are another great option and depending on the variety, give off a lovely aroma. Some are more disease-resistant and hardy than others, so do your research before choosing roses for your garden.
For guaranteed colour and bloom with the most minimal of effort, Cosmos are a great annual plant. You will need to plant afresh each year, but once planted, they survive and flourish even without regular watering in the hot summer months.
Grow herbs in a herb patch
Herbs are often much easier to look after than vegetables, and they will grow back each year if looked after correctly. The other wonderful thing about herbs, is that they will flower, which means they will bring the bees into your garden. Herbs are best picked up as small plants in late Spring by which time you can plant them without the risk of frost damaging them. You can create a space for a herb patch, or if you are worried about the soil quality then a raised bed would be ideal.
Herbs grow just as well in pots, and you can bring some lovely aroma to different areas of the garden with lavender and rosemary growing in pots across your patio, near your garden seating.
Just remember – if you are growing herbs to use in your cooking, you might want easy access to them so you can gather the herbs when you need them.
Think biodiversity
There is a massive focus on climate change and doing the right things for our planet right now. And our gardens are a great space to allow nature to thrive and encourage biodiversity.
Some garden ideas you can carry out are incredibly simple! One, is to hold back on the amount of gardening you do. For example, leaving plants and grass to grow a little longer, even the weeds, attracts many species of insects including bees and butterflies.
It might be difficult in a new-build garden to find a good place for a bird box, but when you plan your garden think where you could incorporate one to encourage the birds. The best place for a bird box is as high up as possible, ideally in a sheltered location.
Insect hotels are good fun to create with the children and will attract everything from beetles to spiders. All you need is to gather and leave some piles of twigs, rotting wood, and small stones or rocks in various areas of your garden and the insects will come.
And something which housing developer Redrow has focused on in the last few years with its new-build developments, is encouraging a safe passage for hedgehogs to roam. You can do your bit to help hedgehogs too, by speaking with your neighbour and agreeing to make a little gap in your fence panels for the hedgehogs to pass through.
There is a tendency in the modern world to transform most of our gardens to areas for sitting and socialising, which sees lawns dug up and replaced with large patio or decked areas. Try and consider a balance between the two, so your garden is a safe haven for nature as much as for you and your family.
Are you starting to look for your first home and hope to buy a new-build? We make the job of searching for a new-build home much easier by listing new homes from a large choice of housing developers, large and small, in one place. Simply start your search by location here
