Jason Hallway writes
Below is the plan of the garden of a house I have just purchased. The
conservatory is just an oblong shaped bricked wall of approx 5 foot tall as
a base which holds up the glass frames. The garden is level with the top of
the base, so that it has stairs leading up to it:-



First impressions are that the conservatory is far too big for the garden,
and I'm tempted make it smaller and put it in the corner where the stairs
are. This has the advantage that it could be used for storage if need be, as
could the walkway next to the house back wall.

Do you mean a conservatory (in the sense of a glass roofed room attached
to the house) or do you mean a separate greenhouse?

I wouldn't reduce the size, since the one thing I know about
greenhouses/conservatories is that they are never big enough! But that
depends on how much you enjoy the process of gardening and how much you
see a garden as simply something to be kept tidy.

There is the temptation to just pull the whole thing down so as to open the
garden up, but there is still the problem of the garden being five foot
above the walk way,

That gives the opportunity to grow plants cascading down the wall

and level with the neighbours' gardens on both sides. If
I lowered the garden, it would effectively increase the height of the
boundary fence to 5 foot over what is now -6 foot, making 11 foot in total.
So that I may end up plunging the garden into a dark pit.

Could also get problems with run off from both gardens after heavy rain,
and you would have to provide a substantial retaining wall all around
your garden otherwise you would cause subsidence of your neighbours
gardens.

You could dig out part of the garden to a lower level, so the low part
wasn't sop small and poky - you'd still need retaining walls. Having a
change of level adds interest to a garden.

I wouldn't be in a rush to change things. Give yourself time to see how
you settle into the house, what windows you spend time looking out of,
what you use the conservatory for, and so on.
--
Kay