The UK’s Top Cities for Gardening Loving Renters

As lockdown has gripped the nation, millions have looked to take up new hobbies in their homes to fill their time. One of those hobbies is gardening, with Google seeing a 15-year high in search interest in April and May 2020 as people across the country seek to become closer to nature while restricted to the confines of their homes.

What's in this article?

Most ‘gardener-friendly’ locations for UK renters
Gardener friendly cities for renters
Ranked: The UK’s 25 major cities for garden and green lovers
Methodology
Landlord insurance from Towergate
About the author
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Most ‘gardener-friendly’ locations for UK renters

To help these new green advocates and garden lovers, we analysed the UK’s 25 largest cities by population figures, to determine the most ‘gardener-friendly’ locations for renters, and their newfound gardening skills. The analysis used several criteria points to score each of the cities against which we then used to work out an overall rank for each city.

Gardener friendly cities for renters

Our research reveals that Wolverhampton is the UK’s most gardener friendly city for renters, performing well across all areas, particularly for the number of garden centres and open fields per 100,000 of their population.

Newport and Manchester made up the rest of the top three ‘gardener friendly’ cities in the UK for renters, coming in second and third place, respectively. Derby and Coventry came in close behind, ranking at fourth and fifth position.

Ranking factors include percentage of available rentals with a garden, terrace or balcony, and the number of allotments, garden centres and parks or fields per 100,000 people in the populations.

Ranked: The UK’s 25 major cities for garden and green lovers

Rank	City
1	Wolverhampton
2	Newport
3	Manchester
4	Derby
5	Coventry
6	Leeds
6	Stoke-on-Trent
8	Southampton
9	Bristol
10	Birmingham
11	Sunderland
11	Bradford
13	Kingston upon Hull
14	Preston
15	Leicester
15	Edinburgh
17	Cardiff
18	Sheffield
19	London
19	Nottingham
19	Plymouth
22	Belfast
23	Glasgow
24	Swansea
25	Liverpool

Methodology

Our methodology involved analysing existing data and reputable sources.

The UK’s 25 major cities by population figures were analysed and the below four criteria points were analysed for each city:

Percentage of rental properties with a garden, terrace, or balcony – this data was pulled from Zoopla’s website search feature.
Number of allotments per 100,000 people – this data was taken from council websites and are therefore inclusive of council run allotments only.
Number of garden centres in the area per 100,000 people – this data was taken from Yell’s search feature.
Number of fields/parks per 100,000 people – these were all taken from Field In Trust’s website of fields they protect.

Each of the cities were then ranked for each of the above criteria points, before an average rank across all aspects gave the final ranking number known as the ‘overall index number’. Desk research sources for each criterion is available on request.

Data sources are as follows:

zoopla.co.uk
Individual Council websites
yell.com
fieldsintrust.org/fields

Landlord insurance from Towergate

Landlord insurance provides cover specifically for renting properties, including loss of rent cover and property portfolios. For more information visit our dedicated landlord insurance page or call us on 0344 892 1664.

About the author

Mike Stephen is a respected senior industry professional and Fellow of the Chartered Insurance Institute (CII) with well over 40 years’ varied experience in the commercial insurance sector as a director, underwriter, and operational improvement manager.

This is a marketing article by Towergate Insurance.