What was your yards/gardens like when you grew up?

[SweetBeast]

As a young kid & teen, we had 2 beautiful lawns, front & back, & around the perimeter in front, we had Pink, White & Red Fuschia's, pink Hibiscus, & at the 2 corners in front of the house, we had Junipers. In the shaded area, we had a rubber tree plant with babytear underneath & by the hose, a pretty orange Azalia. Close to one corner in front, was a wonderful Chinese Elm, & every year, we had the Morning Glory caterpillars which, in turn, would evolve into these beautiful butterflies!

Our side yard was a beautiful lawn,a non bearing banana plant & against the wood fence, separating front from back, I put in a trellis, on which I had Morning Glories & honeysuckle.

In the back, we had a nice large, covered patio, which I loved in the rain! And separating part of the lawn from the patio, we had a raised, brick planter about 25' long & 2' wide, with succulents of various species, a few baby palms, & bark as mulch. In the yard we had 2 plum trees, a Satsuma & a Santa Rosa, an apricot tree as well as 2 peach trees, a yellow peach & a white Babcock peach! And on the north wall, we had First Prize roses, Ranunculas & several different succulents, 2 of which were Aloe.

Oh how I miss that home & yards.

And yours?

 

[claudine]

I have some beautiful memories. My parents have a big house with a very big garden. I remember lots and lots of bushes and trees, I loved it, it was almost like a forest - so wild, natural and beautiful, I loved playing there. It was so much fun. Sure, it was all in a mess but I like when plants grow how they like. Unfortunately it's no longer like this, my parents cut down almost everything - and now they have one, enormous lawn. I think it's awful

 

[Lanie]

We had huge lilac bushes along one fence in the front yard and every spring me and my sister would check on them every day waiting for them to bloom. A giant climbing tree in the back...I don't even know what kind of tree it was, just that we used it for hide and seek. The back yard had raspberry bushes and we had to fight the birds for the fruit every summer. A large lawn in the back yard and one year it was completely yellow with dandelions and we had a lot of fun playing with them, especially after they went to seed; my father hated them and eventually used some kind of poison to get rid of them . We had a small flower garden of which I mostly remember pansies growing in. It was a fantastic place to explore and be in. I still miss that yard and I sometimes dream about it.

 

[Jed]

Childhood memories.
Sweetbeast your garden sounded fantastic.
I had lawn to run around on with grapevines down along one fence, a Norfolk pine to climb so high to the top and two almond trees so large that one of them I built a three storey tree house from packing crates collected from the Ford motor company next door.

 

[sunflower]

We had a little side yard that we had a vegetable garden with lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, etc. And then in the back we had some kind of cherry tree, a Bartlett pear tree and a crab apple tree. The back wall had ivy growing up it and on top of the wall was the back of someone's garage, also covered in ivy. The front yard had a couple trees, but I don't remember what they were. In the front side yard, we'd have a flower garden. We also had sunflowers and a lilac bush. It wasn't anything fancy, but it was 'home'.

 

[claudine]

Childhood memories.
Sweetbeast your garden sounded fantastic.
I had lawn to run around on with grapevines down along one fence, a Norfolk pine to climb so high to the top and two almond trees so large that one of them I built a three storey tree house from packing crates collected from the Ford motor company next door.

Almond trees are the most beautiful! We had one in our garden but of course my parents decided to cut it down . It was quite small - maybe because of the climate.

 

[zigs]

My Dad used to keep the Garden lovely, big apple tree in the middle that I used to climb.

I had a small patch to grow some veg, but now and again I used to get the urge to dig a hole.

My poor Dad must have dispaired when he came home from work & found me digging towards Australia with a huge pile of soil next to me.

 

[claudine]

This is so cute As a child I wasn't interested in digging at all but I loved climbing trees. I tried to climb every tree in my garden. But I wasn't very successful at it

 

[ChanellG]

My poor Dad must have dispaired when he came home from work & found me digging towards Australia with a huge pile of soil next to me.

ROFLOL!

We always had a nice, lush lawn and lots of flowering plants. There were a few trees, but those are all gone now, except the cedar tree in front. Later my grandfather put in a Japanese maple, but now all of my grandmother's roses are gone. The only thing left in back is the maple.

 

[Jed]

I had a small patch to grow some veg, but now and again I used to get the urge to dig a hole.

My poor Dad must have dispaired when he came home from work & found me digging towards Australia with a huge pile of soil next to me.

Did yo ever get there/here? I haven't spotted you yet in my garden.

 

[zigs]

Did yo ever get there/here? I haven't spotted you yet in my garden.

Started getting a bit hot around the Moho Discontinuity

I remember I bought a kids sand brick maker in Italy. When I got it home I mixed up some cement & made minature bricks for my patch in the garden. I had a 1920's book on formal estate landscaping & made my own versions of grand gardens, paladian bridges, ponds etc.

It was all looking good till some water that had backed up behind the conservatory ( I must have blocked a drain) started to seep through.

Within minutes i'd turned it into a mudbath

 

[Arzosah]

Wow, there are some big gardens described in this thread! The garden of the house that I first remember as a child was a yard, literally a yard, just laid to concrete - very common in working class areas in the north of England then, I think. There were a couple of window boxes hanging from the walls, and that was it. Even though this was in a big city, there was an orchard nearby, and two parks, one on each side of us. And best of all was my grandad's garden, which was a riot of colour. He must have been well ahead of his time, everything grew there, anything that was tall, or colourful - lilies, roses, and delphiniums. His shed, I have to say, was the old air raid shelter. I remember it being very mysterious - you went down a few steps to it, and it was a shed with shelves inside, but from the outside there was grass all over it (of course, my memory of it is from 20 years after WWII.

 

[mandikl0721]

I grew up as a farmer so the last thing that we had time for was weeding the garden. By the time the cows were feed and milked, and the field work done, we were lucky to even put in a garden, let alone take care of one, so a weedy garden never bothered me growing up. We always had plenty of veggies, but you needed a machete to get through the weeds to get anything out of there. We could never have a small garden, one more easy to manage, it was always the size of a small house right at the edge of the field so dad wouldn't have to work the ground twice. Then me and my sister would plant the seeds and mom would came along behind with the hoe to cover them up. You usually just forgot about it until harvest time came!

The garden is a bit different now. Still right at the edge of the field so the ground doesn't need worked twice, but unlike then, now I just take the mower or weed eater through the rows! I know I will never win any awards for best garden, but it keeps my family fed!

 

[ACSAPA]

As a kid, I lived on a street called Garden Avenue that didn't really have any gardens. All the trees and plants were at the Catholic church a block away,.
I grew up in an apartment building that had no real backyard ,just a small guava tree and a small tree with tiny, sour oranges,

 

[zigs]

Right at the end of the garden I used to find tiny square mirrors which I was convinced must belong to Fairies, didn't know about shattered safety glass from wing mirrors