Whether you are a country gardener with ten acres, a city-dweller with a square yard of decking, or a suburban enthusiast of water-features, your garden is crucial when it comes to selling your house. It can make you money.

George Franks, the head of estate agents Douglas and Gordon in Clapham, South London, says: “A cracking south-facing garden can increase a property's value by between 2 and 10 per cent. If you have two houses worth £800,000, the one with a garden will cost £50,000 more.”

There are four categories of garden that appeal to buyers, says Alexander Hunt, the head of Humberts' in Canterbury: “In a city, you want a small, walled garden with terracing, pots and furniture. In the country, you want a typical English cottage garden with roses round the porch and a mix of plants; the commuter wants lawns with maintenance-free shrubs; and the serious gardener likes herbaceous borders, topiary, an orchard and a kitchen garden.”

Whichever category yours comes into, there is work to be done when you come to sell. For city gardens, George Franks recommends low-maintenance. “Even a small garden requires work and people in cities aren't at home much. A big garden can detract from the value.”

In the Home Counties, says Paul Finnegan, a director at Savills, “People will snoop around outside when they see a house for sale - so the external view is paramount”.
LUCY ALEXANDER

The Times gardener Stephen Anderton writes: There are people out there, and I am one, who will buy a house for its garden. “That I must have,” they'll say, “I'll even pay over the odds for it.” Maybe I did that, but it has been worth it. The previous owners had done nothing special to the garden to make it sell, but it pressed all the right buttons for me. The big question for most people selling is: what are the right buttons for the average buyer? What can be done to give a garden the wow-factor, added value for everyone who comes to view.

The art of persuading a housebuyer to fall in love with your garden is the art of second-guessing. Adding flower beds might appeal to a keen gardener and frighten off the beginner who just wants somewhere leafy to read and sunbathe. Yards of decking might seduce the beginner, but depress the enthusiast. The answer is to have a good cross-section of features, some of which at least will touch the heart, and hopefully the purse-strings, of every buyer. The people must be given what they want.

Usable space comes top of the list and it has a definite, if unrecognised, allure. There needs to be enough paving close by the house where you can sit and stand a table and chairs to eat out; a patio can never be too generous (it can, just, but you know what I mean). Paving means the paths too, ways of getting to the shed with dry feet to fetch a fork, or a bicycle, or a secreted birthday present, or to hop to the summerhouse for a late-night fag or to walk off a rage.

People will want to see open space where children can play (where grandchildren can play, come to that: not all oldies want a garden packed with flowerbeds), a place sufficiently open and free of trees to play ball games. They will want calm spaces in sun and shade where it might be good to sit, a capacious but discreetly hidden shed in which to hide all the stuff that would go in the garage if it wasn't full of the stuff that should be in the kitchen, and a place to hide the obligatory recycling bins. None of these things might make a buyer drop their particulars and say “Wow”, but when they get home the audit will start: was there enough space for the kids, did you notice anywhere to sit, and wasn't that little patio miserable? If the practical uses of a garden are catered for then the garden begs no questions, it lets the viewer concentrate on its living attraction: the plants.

Offer people space, but also give them promise, a garden of delights to come. Give them enough colour, but not the prospect of a lifetime on their knees or behind a mower, and have flower colour where it's most telling - at the garden's focal moments and pinch points. Be sure there is a tempting view from the kitchen window and a halo of greenery around doorways. Have secret paths and solitary spaces as well as the utilitarian ones - three bamboos to make a screen might be all you need. Above all, have no acres of uncertain, empty soil. Space for weeds! No man's land!

One of the best kinds of promise is what you could call earth's bounty: a vegetable patch is what everyone wants now - and tomorrow we will be telling you how to grow it. Follow our two-part series and life in this house could be really good.

The perfect vegetable patch - eat (nearly) free veg for life

Explore Gardens

• Hampton Court Palace Flower Show

• Chelsea Flower Show

Times recommends

• Second homes: credit crunch casualty or money-spinner?
• How I built my own sliding house
• Top 10 incentives for house buyers