Campaign Calls For A New Standard For Britain’s New-Build Homes

Campaign Calls For A New Standard For Britain’s New-Build Homes

As Britain embarks on one of its biggest periods of housebuilding in a generation, a new national campaign is calling for the gardens around those homes to be given far greater attention.

The New Build Manifesto https://newbuildmanifesto.co.uk/, founded by award-winning garden writer and designer Andrew Jackson, launches on 24 September with a mission to raise the standard of new-build gardens across Britain.

With more than a million new gardens potentially being created during this Parliament, the campaign argues that Britain has a once-in-a-generation opportunity: not simply to build new homes, but to create an entirely new generation of gardens.

Yet many buyers currently receive outdoor spaces that are little more than a starting point – compacted or poor-quality soil, thin turf, close-board fencing, limited planting and little provision for wildlife, shade or increasingly extreme weather.

For homeowners, the result can be years of work and considerable additional expense before the space outside their new home becomes the garden they expected it to be.

The New Build Manifesto wants that to change

Its central argument is simple: a garden should not be treated as the space left over once a new home has been built. It should be regarded as part of its essential infrastructure.

“We are building new homes at a huge scale, but we urgently need to ask what we are building around them too,” says Andrew Jackson, founder of The New Build Manifesto.

“We have the opportunity to create more than a million new gardens in just a few years. Imagine the impact if those gardens began life with decent soil, better planting, space for nature and the ability to cope with heavier rainfall and hotter summers.

“A new garden shouldn’t be an expensive problem handed to the homeowner with the keys. Done properly, it can be an asset from day one – for the people who live there, for wildlife and for the neighbourhood around it.”

More than a lawn and a fence

There are around 25.8 million gardens across Great Britain, according to the Royal Horticultural Society. Collectively, they form an enormous network of green space, providing habitat for wildlife while helping to absorb rainfall, moderate temperatures and make towns and cities greener and more liveable.

The creation of more than a million new gardens therefore represents an environmental opportunity at a scale that is easy to overlook.

The New Build Manifesto is calling for the quality of gardens and outdoor spaces to be considered alongside the quality of the homes themselves.

It wants the conversation about new housing to include practical questions about the ground beneath our gardens, how water moves through developments, the trees and plants we establish, how wildlife can move between plots, and whether gardens being created today will remain comfortable and resilient as the climate changes.

The ambition is not to prescribe what every garden should look like. It is to ensure homeowners are given the foundations from which a good garden can grow.

From blank plot to thriving garden

Jackson knows the experience first-hand.

When he moved into a new-build home, his own garden began as many do: a relatively blank plot surrounded by fencing.

Over the following years, he transformed it into a mature, wildlife-rich garden. That experience eventually prompted a much bigger question: why are so many new homeowners expected to begin their gardens almost entirely from scratch?

The New Build Manifesto grew from that question.

It combines a national campaign for better new-build gardens with practical support for the people already living with them – helping homeowners understand their soil, improve drainage, choose resilient plants, create habitats for wildlife and allow young gardens to develop character and maturity over time.

The message is deliberately optimistic: the blank plots being created around new homes are not simply a problem to solve. Collectively, they could become one of Britain’s biggest opportunities to create new green space.

A campaign for homeowners and industry

The New Build Manifesto is bringing together homeowners, housebuilders, developers, garden designers, horticultural businesses, environmental organisations and policymakers around a shared ambition for better new-build gardens.

Rather than seeking to create identical gardens, the campaign wants to establish some basic principles for what homeowners should reasonably expect: good ground, sensible water management, opportunities for planting and trees, connectivity for wildlife, and gardens capable of adapting to a changing climate.

It will also provide homeowners with practical information and inspiration to help them transform the gardens they already have.

Andrew Jackson adds:

“This isn’t about demanding elaborate landscaped gardens with every new house. It’s about getting the fundamentals right.

“We are going to build these homes anyway, and the land around them is going to become millions of gardens. We can either regard that space as an afterthought, or recognise what an extraordinary opportunity it represents.

“Britain is a nation of gardeners. The next generation of British gardens is being created right now.”

From 24 September 2026, homeowners, organisations and industry professionals will be invited to take the New Build Manifesto pledge and support the campaign for a better standard of garden alongside every new home.

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