Spare a thought for the humble gardener. Summertime is their time, the airy days and light-filled evenings just right for quiet toil that gladdens the soul. With plants in colourful bloom, this is the uplifting season when all that nurture and care finally comes to fruition. Only weeds stand in the way of joy.
Or so it may seem. But now comes dour news in the form of a plan from builders Glenveagh for smaller back gardens, to make room for more low-rise, high-density housing.
The word garden doesn’t appear once in the Government’s Housing for All blueprint. Still, Glenveagh has cast the proposal to cut more than a quarter of the space at the rear of houses and reduce the number of new apartments as a housing crisis game-changer. There are so many forces bearing down on the dysfunctional market that it is difficult to conceive of this – or any other single measure – as the elusive panacea. But more density still means more units to sell and more returns for groups such as Glenveagh, whose 2021 pre-tax profit was €45.7 million.
The idea may be in keeping with the principles of compact growth, the drive to build within existing cities and towns instead of low-density accommodation in green fields. That runs counter to the sense that a garden is a pleasant thing, positive both for environment and biodiversity.
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If the Government wants to persuade the next generation of house-buyers of the benefits of so-called “denser” living, it needs to show how this would work – and how public green spaces, and innovative design might compensate for somewhat smaller living spaces.
Glenveagh cites focus group research, saying the back third of gardens are generally “dead space” or “under-utilised”. The argument goes that the guidelines are outdated because they date to the days of the vegetable patch, rare now, and the outdoor toilet, long gone. If the green-fingered people would be quick to challenge the notion, there is every possibility they weren’t available for focus group chatter because they were gainfully occupied deadheading the flowers.