"smeckler" wrote in message
...
I'm considering becoming a first-time buyer. I notice estate agents
always
seem to consider 'South facing' to be a highly desirable feature in their
ads. Isn't East/West facing preferable, so that down the full length of
your garden you get South facing borders?

What does everyone like/dislike about the orientation of their own places?

ta,
smeckler
Hi,

We face SSW, are on the East coast, and face the sea - most confusing.
All caused by being on the South facing arm of a wide shallow bay.

We are great fans of South facing gardens - we get the morning, noon and
evening sun on the back of the house, and in the summer we have the back of
the house open to the garden most of the time.

We have a sun room with a balcony above, which is ideal for South facing; in
the winter when the sun is low in the sky we get a sunny warm room most of
the day (80 degrees F at Christmas), and in summer the balcony shades the
room preventing it getting too hot, and we sit on the balcony.

The evening sun catches the bottom left hand side of the garden (looking out
from the back of the house) so we have a small patio area there and a pond,
and a pergola roofed over with reeds (Greek Taverna) to provide summer
shade. Great to sit out and watch the sun go down, and in really warm spells
it is nice to sit out after dark.

Because the whole width of the garden at the back of the house is patio,
leading down mainly to lawn, we have virually no South facing borders - just
a small triangular bit with lavender and stuff in. The borders are West,
North, East facing.

So a big vote for South facing - you don't have to be in the front of the
house for half the day and the back for the other half to get all day sun -
breakfast on the patio, and dinner and tea as well (or was that lunch and
dinner?).

The one down side is that the front of the house is virtually always in
shade.
However we have a front concrete instead of a front garden, and tend to live
at the back of the house away from the road so this suits us just fine, and
the car doesn't get fried in the summer.

The difference in temperature between the front and back of the house in
Autumn/Winter/Spring is amazing - coat and hat out the front and T-shirt on
the patio.

Cheers

Dave R

Oh, and South facing borders on an East/West facing house; the house loses a
lot of sun because of the other houses in the street plus you have a garden
where one long side is North facing and in almost perpetual shade, and one
side which is South facing and sunny. There are houses near us where one
half of the garden will barely grow grass and the other half is lovely. I
prefer a small shady strip at the bottom and the rest of the garden sunny.