Garden style apartments are designed using smaller buildings with up to four stories each. Apartments front to large open spaces filled with grass and trees. These outdoor courtyards invite community and surround apartments that have light-filled rooms, fresh breezes, and private entrances.
COVID realities saw many renters looking to escape cramped elevators, long, dark communal hallways, and densely packed urban streets. Many moved to smaller cities and suburbs, taking advantage of remote work opportunities. Developers responded, reinvigorating the more-than-century-old Garden City idea.
This movement, initiated in late 19th-century London, sought to marry urban culture and community with the green spaces and fresh air of the countryside. Check out early American examples such as Colonial Village in Arlington, VA built in the 1930s and The Village Green in Los Angeles. Temperate Southern California embraced this style of indoor/outdoor living.
Understanding Garden Style Apartments
Garden style apartments feature simple architecture with private outside entrances. You’ll notice multiple buildings of low-stacked apartments, no taller than four stories high. With no interior hallways, a single building often has few units per side. They face and are surrounded by open spaces filled with grass, trees, maybe a pool, fire pits or outdoor games.
Some include garages for cars, others may place cars on the periphery. People, therefore, walk through the green spaces on foot, no streets to cross on their way.
Rather than numerous luxury details, a focus on natural light, cross ventilation, color and texture creates a healthier place to live.
Features of Garden Style Apartments
Private entrances: pros and cons
Opening your outside door directly into your own apartment replicates the feel of a townhome or single family house. It creates more privacy, with no need to see or socialize with neighbors on the way home or out.
However, it’s easier for someone uninvited to directly come to your apartment entrance. There’s no security desk, single entrance, or neighbors walking by in a hallway.
Extensive landscaping: trees, flowers, grass
Garden-style apartment developers put effort into the landscaping. Trees, flowers, and grassy areas are the norm. Additional space between, around, and in the middle of buildings means more ground to plant.
Mid-rise or high-rise apartments tend to offer indoor amenities like fitness rooms, game rooms, or club houses. While garden-style apartments may include these, the real stars of these complexes encourage you to go outside. Most feature spaces filled with flowers and trees, maybe a pool with greenery surrounding it. There’s space for you, and any kids you have, to run, play, and kick a ball.
Patios or balconies: get outside with views of the greenery
Patios on ground level apartments put you closest to the flowers and trees. Dog owners love the easy access to walks. Apartments on the upper levels include balconies with views overlooking gardens or pools. Tree branches at balcony height let you check on squirrel families or bird nests.
Benefits of Choosing a Garden Style Apartment
The American dream of a single-family house emphasizes a place with a yard to call your own. Garden-style apartments stand in as the multi-family version. Most allow you to come and go without traversing a long, shared hallway or cramped stairs or elevator. Smaller individual buildings mean more windows face outside, instead of larger buildings, often with fewer, all along a single wall.
Main floor apartments with doors that open directly outside provide easily accessible entrances. These may be a godsend to any of you with mobility issues.
Humans thrive through connections to nature. Fresh air on a balcony, more oxygen generated by nearby trees and plants, and natural light through tons of windows encourage calm and renewed health.
Considerations Before Renting a Garden Style Apartment
Pets: You may be considering a garden style apartment to give your dog or cat closer access to nature. You’ll still need to check on the rules about pets in the community you consider. Some open spaces may welcome dogs on leash. Others may include fenced-in areas as off-leash dog parks. Look into the specific rules of any apartment you consider around leashes, breeds, cleaning up after your pooch, and barking dogs.
Maintenance: Look into how much maintenance you’re agreeing to do, if any. Does the apartment complex mow the lawn or do you? Who’s responsible for pest control inside or outside of your space? Is the pool regularly maintained? Do kids have access to all of the open spaces? Do lease-holders take on any type of duties?
Personal preferences: Consider your personal preferences. Do open spaces make you feel tranquil or lonely? Do you prefer to be walking distance to restaurants and coffee shops or would you rather get away a bit from the crowds? Do you feel safer around more people or stressed? Does a direct entrance to your unit feel private or less secure?
Possible Downsides to Garden Style Apartments
When you have easier access to the outdoors, it does to you, too. Cold, heat, rain, even bugs or other creatures might enter into your windows, onto your balcony, or under your front door. Especially if you’re on the ground floor.
With your front door directly accessible from the outside of the building, security may present a concern. Some garden apartment buildings do include security for the main entrance.
Garden style apartments lack an elevator, so if you have mobility concerns, or simply hate to walk up stairs, choose the ground floor.
With fewer shared walls to act as insulation from the outside, heating bills can be higher. In warmer months, however, more windows and cross-ventilation mean air conditioning stays off more of the time.
Large urban high rises near streets of cafes and shops differ in feel from a slower paced, less centrally located, garden apartment complex. These tend to be located in residential areas on the edges of cities, in suburbs, or in smaller cities.
The simpler design of exteriors and interiors, with variety and interest focused more on gardens and pools, isn’t for everyone. Though developments of new garden style apartment buildings are coming onto the market, others sit dated and in need of renovation.
Difference between Garden Style Apartments and Garden-Level Apartments
A garden-level generally means one half-way between ground floor and basement level, with a few steps down into the apartment. Often in urban areas, windows sit half above and half under street level. While they often include a patio or backyard, some former residents complain about flooding, pests, and pedestrians walking right outside their place. Others promote their dog-friendly, easily accessible nature, and suggest window bars for security.
Garden-level apartments are usually not the same as garden-style apartments.
Tips for Finding Your Perfect Garden Style Apartment
Apartment listings sites don’t always enable you to specify a garden style building as a feature. Test out different filter options – Zillow and apartments.com have more than most. Consider adding “park” under view, and adjust options to include pool, balcony, dog park, or playground. Try including “garden” as a keyword. Add in dog or cat friendly if needed.
Larger or newer garden-style complexes often show up with a Google search on “garden-style apartment” in the location you need.
Ask landlords about community events, maintenance responsibilities, and security provided. Question them about other residents’ choices on added security and locks. Discuss when features like clubhouses, pools, hot tubs, or community gardens open and close for each season.
Before signing a lease, make sure to visit the exact apartment you’ll inhabit. Get a tour or walk around the grounds, and look at any amenities like pools, fitness centers, or hot tubs. Walk between buildings and look at landscaping to see how well it’s cared for.
Garden-style apartments give you fresh air, sunshine, trees and flowers on a daily basis, which has to be a good way to live.
