UK’s ‘worst’ city for gardening named – ‘too much rain and not enough garden centres’

A new study has revealed that Manchester is the surprising UK city that’s the best for gardening despite its history of famed cobbled streets, back to back housing and industrial heritage.

But a city just across the Pennines from Manchester has been declared the worst city for green-fingered growers.

The UK Gardening Index, compiled by indoor-outdoor living experts at , ranked UK cities based on factors including average rainfall, temperature, garden size, wind speed and number of garden centres. It identified the best cities for novice and experienced gardeners.

Hot on Manchester green heels came Birmingham and London. The Midlands city ranked first for the biggest average garden size.

London took third place overall despite having the smallest average garden size.

The number crunchers looked at the climates of 13 cities taking into account the average temperature, rainfall and wind speed, all essential in selecting a good gardening spot. 

They also added in data on the size of the average garden and the number of garden centres where shoppers could buy all their plants and gardening tools. 

Cities included were Manchester, Liverpool, London, Birmingham, Cardiff, Bradford, Glasgow, Nottingham, Coventry, Leicester, Bristol, Sheffield and Leeds.

Manchester was named as the best city to garden scoring highly on average rainfall and temperature. The city is famous for it always raining there.

Manchester enjoys 120cm of rain a year with an average annual temperature of just under 10.5ºC. It also boasts a sizeable garden, although not the largest, at 88㎡ and a whopping 46 garden centres.

Birmingham took second place and was revealed as the urban spot with the largest gardens. The average size in the city is 138㎡. It also took the top spot for wind speed, being the most sheltered and least blustery location for gardening with windspeeds of 18kph. 

But it was Bradford that propped up the bottom of the table scoring poorly on average temperature, wind speed and garden size. The city had only 20 garden centres, putting it in tenth place for that factor. The Yorkshire city had the doubly whammy of low temperatures and small garden plots.

Glasgow came just ahead of the Yorkshire city, taking 12th place. Despite having a healthy amount of rain, gardeners may struggle with low average temperatures and windy conditions at almost 20kph.

 The Welsh capital, Cardiff, took the seventh spot as the best UK city to garden. It scored highly for its annual rainfall and average temperatures but had the lowest number of garden centres alongside Coventry, with just 19.

Interestingly London took third place as the best city to garden due to its favourable growing conditions and taking top place for the number of garden centres. It did record the smallest garden size at just 35㎡.

 Bristol, Sheffield and Liverpool took the fourth, fifth and sixth places respectively. Bristol scored highly on the number of garden centres (49) and Sheffield had the second largest average garden size at 133㎡. Liverpool also scored well based on the average size of the garden. 

 Nottingham, Coventry, Leeds and Leicester took the eight, ninth, tenth and 11th places in the table. 

 Nottingham, Coventry and Leicester all scored poorly on average rainfall, with garden size letting down gardeners in Leeds. 

 Garden design expert, Sam Stevens, from  said: “Our UK Gardening Index is a great way to see how the cities rank for gardening based on factors like average garden sizes, the local climate and garden centre accessibility.

 “It’s no surprise the further south you go the smaller the garden sizes become, but London having a 103㎡ difference between Birmingham is a sure sign that avid gardeners might want to look outside of the capital for gardening opportunities.

 “The overall best city for gardening is Manchester thanks to its mix of rain and sunshine. Bradford ranked as the worst city for gardening due to its low temperature and smaller garden size.

 “The important thing to remember though is that you can adjust your garden to suit the local weather conditions, its size and your accessibility to all garden tools and materials. 

 “A garden is what you make of it and us UK dwellers are an adaptable bunch when it comes to creating the perfect outside space.”