To wonder if you grew up without a garden, how did you find it?

[Peachgranola]

Just that really.

We we’re fortunate that we had a decent sized garden growing up down South.

Now I’ve bought a house in the North, beautiful countryside around us but no garden.
We have a 4 year old son.

So I guess I’m just wondering what it’s like to grow up without a garden. We have fields, a nature reserve, hillsides and woodlands, all walking distance from our house. But it’s not the same as just opening the door to a garden for him to play in.

We only had a very small yard and it was generally fine.

I had a swing set at my grandparents house and there was a park on our road. I was occasionally jealous of friends having large gardens, but that was only between the ages of say 7 - 11. Before and after that I didn’t really care.

So does your front door open straight on to the pavement? What’s at the back of your house?

I grew up in London with no garden and it was fine. We lived near a park and spent a lot of time there. IMO it's harder for the parent than the child, as you still have to take them to the park for quite a few years after they're old enough to play unsupervised in the garden.

I had a huge garden but my parents never mowed it so it was more like a jungle with abandoned cars in amongst the grass. It was awful and we couldn’t play or do anything with it.

i was always jealous of my friends with nice gardens to play in (no matter what size!). i would have loved a small courtyard / patio.

@VainAbigail in the house I grew up in the front door opened onto the pavement and there was no door (or window) in the back wall of the house.

We had a tiny narrow yard at the back. We played on the street or in the park ~100m away (1980's). I've never had a garden and neither has my DC. We have a similar yard now actually. We go to the park in fine weather and make the most of family members gardens when we can.

I didn't grow up in the UK and living in a flat/apartment was the norm in the country I'm from so I never really thought about it. There was a communal garden/grass area though that was great for children to play with other children from the neighbourhood. I agree with someone upthread that it's much harder for the parents as they need to supervise and go out rather than just opening the back door. Looking back as an adult, as I now have a house with a garden, one of the things I missed out on as a child was being able to learn to garden and grow flowers and vegetables from seed - I really enjoy it as an adult now!

We had a backyard (as in a small paved space at the back of a northern terraced house, not a huge American "yard"). To be totally honest, I did miss having a garden with a lawn and feel envious of friends who had that. I would prioritise having a garden if possible when buying a house now.

And we played out all the time from being 5 or 6 so could go to parks etc under our own steam. I would like it even less now as a child when playing out without adults is more unusual. Sorry, but I assume you do want honest responses.

This thread could turn into a Four Yorkshiremen sketch.

we had a tiny backyard, council house.
but then so did everyone else so we didn’t know what we were missing.

parks were where you went to play in numbers otherwise it was on the street.

life was simpler then , especially being young. ( or is that a cliche? )

@VainAbigail

No there’s a tiny yard, but hardly anything, no space for any play equipment etc.
It needs an awful lot doing to it as well, which we can’t afford right now.
There’s then a stile that you can go across and you’re in the field / hillside that overlooks our house.

We also have a field/park just opposite our house with wooden play equipment in. But that involves crossing the road, so he won’t be able to do that until he’s much older.

I grew up with a huge garden and access to my grand aunts extremely overgrown garden, hers was great for imaginative play, the grass was taller than the children so we had different adventures daily, ours was ideal for football, swingball, paddling pools, growing fruit and veg etc, I was sent 'on holidays' to my townie cousins for a week every summer and hated having no garden, they played on the street but I missed the space to be alone, I liked to put up a tent and hide in there with a book, climb a tree and just lie on a branch listening. I lived in an apartment in San Francisco for a while as an adult but knew I'd never have children there so came back home, was fortunate to be able to raise my family in the same house and garden as I grew up in, realised as an adult that I was sent on those holidays so my uncle didn't feel as bad about his children spending almost the entire summer holidays in the countryside with us!! I think if you've never had a garden it's easier than having one and then moving and not having one, a lot depends on the willingness of the parents to get out and about with the children, some will do only the minimum, others will look for an allotment, plenty park time, day trips etc.

@SilverGlassHare That sounds just likes ours. We do have a stile that leads onto the hillside behind though.

I really wanted a garden when we were looking to buy, but they’re like gold dust around here unfortunately and for that reason they increase the price of the house too.

I don't live in UK, and here where I live we all live in apartments with a park and playground in the middle of our estate.
As somebody who has moved from other part of the country, it was a life saviour. I met so many mums and made two real good friends in that park.
There is a real sense of community in our park. We celebrate birthdays on the lawn and considering the fact our children all go together in the same kindergarten and later tp the same school, you have a feeling you live in a village where everybody knows everybody.
I would lie if I said I do not want a house and a garden. My dream is to have a little patch of land where I'll be able to read a book and drink coffee at 5 am while everybody sleeps.
But I think my children are much happeir in our communal playground.

i grew up in a place with both front/back small gardens; couldn't play in either of them as they were pretty much a building site with bricks, piles of sand, building blocks. Just played in the road (cul-de-sac) and it was a time when there were barely any cars around so didn't miss having a 'garden'.

I think it does very much depend on how often you prepared to take them to the park like for example we lived in a townhouse near to a city centre but near to lovely parks really well catered for so I used to literally get up at 8 o’clock in the morning and we be down there till lunchtime it all wethers playing on the swings in the slides to wear them out for their lunchtime nap.

if you actually have a stile on your back fence and straight onto the field I would have thought that would be amazing. Like your own personal enormous garden.

Play equipment is overrated.

@Peachgranola Our backyard was often full of crap when I was little. There was a broken down brick outhouse that was full of junk, and my parents kept the trailer for camping trips in the yard too so there was very little room for playing. I said it was paved but actually it was only paved when I was in my late teens. Before then it was poured concrete and was breaking up so was rough and uneven. It often smelled as the dog would wee in it. It wasn’t a pleasant space at all.

If I were you, I’d concentrate on making it into a nice courtyard-style garden. Make sure it’s safe for your DC, ie no junk or rubbish, nice and clean flags that you swill regularly, pots with things growing in them, maybe a bench. Somewhere they can play while you sit with them.

There’s loads of ideas for courtyard gardens these days - I think my parents lacked the resources or imagination to make ours nice, and there wasn’t as much on tv etc to show them what to do.

I don’t recall us playing in the garden that much, even though we had one. We were generally out and about, playing in the fields nearby, or the park, or just in the street. This was 40 years ago though, I expect kids these days aren’t quite as adventurous.

We never found it.. so we grew up without a garden 😥

My parents bought a house after WW2 with sitting tenants downstairs and we were 3 minutes from Wandsworth Common. There was far less traffic, the common had prefabs, allotments, two sets of play areas, three sets of toilets, ice cream and cold drinks cabin as well as a cafe/ restaurant by the bowls area.

Mum had a pulley line from a first floor window to hang out her washing and yes I think even a small outside space is better than nothing. You can put down play mats on the ground, water for your little one, even just a pot of sunflower seeds. I remember going in what was a small garden playing with pots and water.

I recently moved from a house with a yard and now have a huge outside space. It’s easier for the child to be gardenless than you because children don’t notice if you take them out to play or walk or paddle a lot. We would go out two or three times a day on foot, often still do.
if you look on Pinterest there are some great ideas for water play etc that are vertical so don’t take up space, you could have a chalk board, long thin sand tray.

I didn’t mind not having a garden until I was about 8, when we moved house. In the old flat, we’d had plenty of playgrounds nearby. The new house did have a garden but it was no good for playing in. Tiny and on a slope. How I envied my friends who had proper gardens, with paddling pools and cherry trees to climb.

Made sure our family home has a decent sized garden precisely because of that experience and I often tell my DDs how lucky they are but they don’t really use our garden much… they take it for granted.

I’d love to move to a house with a garden, for one thing they are few and far between around here and two we definitely can’t afford to move any time soon ☹️

Have never jad a garden, as a kid or adult. I would love one now.
However as a kid it didn't bother me at all. I grew up in London so noone else had one either and there are lots of other outdoor spaces or things to be doing, I don't really remember spending a lot of time indoors.

Whilst its nice to have, your kid isn't going to be somehow deprived by not having a garden if you make sure they have plenty of other outdoor opportunities and stimulating activities (which honestly, parents should be doing anyway, regardless of a garden)