Living in a city can make access to greenspace harder for residents. In fact, The Grass People found that in the largest UK cities there are 107% more houses listed for sale with gardens, compared to flats. This is why roof gardens are so precious in these areas, especially for those living in flats. Luckily for many residents in the UK’s biggest cities, there are plenty of roof gardens where they can enjoy the great outdoors. But which UK cities have the most properties with roof gardens to enjoy?

The 10 cities with the most roof gardens

*Listed for sale with keywords matching ‘roof garden’

• London is revealed to be home to the most roof gardens, with 3,709 properties out of a total 49,514 listed featuring roof gardens
• Manchester comes in second, and has 3,231 properties listed in total, with 270 of them having roof gardens, equating to 8.4% of all properties in the area which is a higher percentage than London at 7.49%
• With almost 100 fewer roof gardens than Manchester, Liverpool has the third highest number of roof garden properties at 176 or 5.33%
• Despite coming fifth overall with 93 properties listed, Salford has the highest percentage of properties on the market with a roof garden, at 9.97%
• The research also revealed that some cities have no properties listed with roof gardens, and they include (but are not limited to) Belfast, Barnsley and Gloucester

The London boroughs with the most roof gardens

*Listed for sale with keywords matching ‘roof garden’

• Wandsworth is the London borough which has the most properties with roof gardens, and has a whopping 421 within 34.27 km², which works out at 12 per km²
• In a very close second place is Tower Hamlets, with 419 properties with roof gardens, and the highest percentage (out of all London boroughs) of properties listed in the area featuring roof gardens
• Westminster, which is home to parliament and covers a large area of central London, takes the third spot, with 327 properties with roof gardens
• Croydon has the least number of roof gardens (136) in the top 10 and the lowest percentage of roof gardens in the top 10 (6.1%)

Commenting on the research, Chris McIlroy, spokesperson at The Grass People says: “It’s easy for people with gardens to forget how lucky they are, to have their very own greenspace which they can enjoy. For those living in cities there may be less opportunities to connect with nature, especially as we found through our research that there were 2,861,576 less flats with gardens than houses. While we know it’s not easy for every property to have a roof garden, it’s great to see so many properties in some of our biggest cities offering little sanctuaries to their residents.

We strongly believe that gardens are great for our mental health, and while the world continues to work from home at such a high rate, we hope that more buildings start to incorporate these sort of spaces for their residents as it can make a huge difference.”