iwearahalo2 wrote:
Hi There ,

I am in the process of buying a house in Liverpool , UK and the house
is SSE Facing . The house is new so obviously will the garden , the
question I wanted to ask was exactly how much sun shall I get (I can
not get into the property yet as its still being built) ? When will
the sun approx go and the shade come in ,

There is a small freeware application called Ephemeris by Johnothan Sachs.
You should be able to download it from big shareware download sites. Once
you put in the details of your location it will compute the time and place
of the rising and setting of sun for any day of the year plus the position
of the sun for any time of day. It will also create tables that you can
export, print, graph etc.

Armed with this, a protractor and a compass you can work out how much sun
any part of the garden will get and when it is in shadow.

There are some web sites that do similar calculations online and possibly
other applications but this one is a excellent and free!.


its a two storey house and
the dimensions of the garden are a bit strange , they are 31ft in
length , 33ft width but the left of the garden its starts at 10ft
width then up to 20ft until its gets to 31ft (so two diagonal
sections as such until it reaches the far side of the garden at 31ft)!
In the 10ft section I wish to put some decking in so I shall be left
with 31L , 25W very approx .


If you have plans consider making a simple scale model (say) out of
cardboard until such time as you can get into the property. This will allow
you to plot out shadow boundaries etc.

What plants would you recommend to a complete novice , I would like
some herbs and spices if possible , would top soil be an issue as its
a new house ?


Topsoil is very likely to be an issue. As is the builder leaving piles of
concrete, plaster, takeaway food containers and turned over rocks and
subsoil all over the place. Assume that you are starting with nothing
useful and you can only be pleasantly amazed if you don't.

I am very sorry for the vagueness of this question but I can not get
into the house until 10sept and I need to get things ordered before
then .

Many Thanks for your patience .

Get some gardening design books (library?)and think long and hard before you
pick up your spade or order any soil. Rushing into this without proper
planning will give you many years to repent. As landscaping books tend to
generalise about plants, or worse list plants that don't suit your climate,
join the local garden club and find out what does well in your area.

David