Brilliant idea! I am also a beginner gardener and have planted many fruit trees recently. Some of the tips I can offer are: Make sure there is easy walking access to each tree/area. See if you can stagger them with smaller ones at the front and larger ones at the back so they all get good sun. Even consider some of the dwarf varieties (they still produce full sized fruit) for the front. I also have clay soil, so made sure when I planted the trees I dug extra deep holes and put in some pebbles for drainage, and a good helping of compost before putting in the trees. I have also heavily mulched around them with a deep layer of autumn leaves topped with peastraw to stop the leaves blowing away - but in a doughnut shape so the trunk of the tree is not covered. I put down a bit of blood and bone under the mulch - apparently this helps the leaves to break down faster and stops too much nitrogen being extracted from the soil while they break down. Once they do break down, they will add all sorts of goodness to the soil - I hope! The other advantage is that the mulch is helping keep them "warm" through our frosty winter, and will help reduce evaporation over summer, so reduce watering requirements. The downside of fruit trees is that over summer you need to be really vigilant for pests, and treat them accordingly - I went through dozens of bottles of homemade garlic spray! The trees I planted are lemon, mandarin, grapefruit, fig, pear, apricot, peach and almond - so far so good, hoping for a first crop of fruit this summer! Hope this helps, good luck!

Thanks Mel. We'll see what we can do to make the rumpus enclosed - it's probably more of a "man cave" at the moment :) Grandad had a dining table in his current place (which is bigger) and got rid of it because he never used it. He also wants more bench space than he currently has. So, this was a deliberate choice rather than a compromise due to lack of space. You've reminded me now that someone did warn us earlier in the design process about the back and forth between wardrobe and bathroom becoming annoying over time. We don't currently have an en suite so it feels wonderfully convenient for us by comparison. However, that feeling will change if we realise it could have been even better. We did have the en suite off the wardrobe in some designs but have been warned this can lead to dampness in your clothes no matter how well ventilated the bathroom is (especially in Auckland's humidity). Would love to hear people's experiences of this configuration - good and bad. On top of that, there are lovely private bush views to the south so we've tried to make the most of those.

We are also building in Christchurch :) So also had to look at these kind of requirements for sun, but we had a much smaller section to work with (800sqm). If cost is OK ideally a 2 story would get light into more of the rooms. You also saod the street frontage is 35m but the plans say currently the width of the house is only 15m, so you could run more of the house along the frontage to get it aligned with North. Its a big section are you setting it very far back from the street? Or are you worried about privacy? Is there a view Northwards, otherwise if you can set back from the street and add hedging or plantings to increase privacy I would try and align as much of the living space to get the North and west sun. Depending on what your roof is like you could also add a clerestory to get light towards the back - we are using skylights as well for our back hall and bathrooms to make sure they get as much natural light as possible.

Hi, Thanks for the response. :) I am following CCC Residential Suburban and Residential Suburban Density Transition Zone. It seems you can build 1m from boundary without having a window facing the boundary. I thought it seemed close, but if it gives me more space on the sunny side of the property then I'm happy. I wasn't sure how worthwhile it was me building interior/external walls into my design. I think a real draftsman would only use my dimensions as a guide and bin my project designs. I've only used the boundary line to design the entire thing, then used some Objects to give a visual guideline.