What did your childhood garden look like?

[DaringAquaViewer]

pear tree
no patio

Chicken, Rabbit fruit,veg,messy,big ,coal bunker. No patio. It was the 50s and 60s. No one sat in a garden then.

Two ponds, an orchard and a tennis court.

Overgrown butterfly bush at the end that had my den hidden behind it, coal bunker at the side that my sister used to hide near and smoke, plum and apple trees, gooseberry bush between the trees, and knee high grass 😆

Didn't have a garden. Tiny backyard with bin in.

I love my garden now.

A mad wild field .

A greengage tree that the lovely elderly neighbour had no idea was there right next to our fence at the bottom of the garden

We had a strawberry patch

Sloping so rubbish for football but had lots of hiding places for hide and seek

Lovely idea for a thread.

A hedge of pale pink Elizabeth roses at the bottom. Then fruit bushes and a potato/ veg patch (though neither parent was a great gardener back then). A lawn with a blue swing. A low wall between us and next door and our lovely neighbour would let me lean over and pick gooseberries and peas.

When I was a teenager my DM discovered gardening and got a greenhouse and after that it was full of flowers.

We lived in the Manor House. Very poor otherwise. Gardens were enormous, which meant we could be self-sufficient to save what little money there was. I spent hours working in the garden from a young age. Also had loads of trees to climb, grass to doze in, entire flower beds of one plant. I remember it would take my Mum an entire day to mulch the rose beds with manure. That quickly became my job 😆.

I’m content with how my life turned out, simple in comparison, but I’ll always miss my childhood gardens.

A coal bunker we used to play in (70s/80s) and a garage which looked like an air raid shelter. Mostly laid to lawn (with mud patches of course) and old fashioned flowers you don’t see much of now like Hollyhocks and Hydrangeas Oh and a big old Cherry tree.

And a swing!

There was a massive weeping willow tree which was in the neighbours garden but hung beautifully over our side, they must have been gutted. Rabbit hutch, bags of bloody courgettes that my mum insisted on growing, and a couple of those huge calor gas canisters. We spent hours playing Tarzan and making dens under that tree, very happy memories!

Pretty much like it does now even 60 years on as Mum and Dad are still there, Mum doing the flowers and Dad doing the veggies.

We did have a very large swing that Grandad made from knocked off scaffolding poles and a bus seat☺️

There was a crabapple tree my mum made jelly from. And a shed that smelt of creosote we used to play shops in. And a toad that lived under a logpile.

Small concreted courtyard with borders that housed some flowers and dead pets!

My children’s first garden was also a paved wasteland but we moved a couple of years ago and now we have a big L shaped lawn, a bbq area, greenhouse and 2 trees, one of which we’ve tied a swing to. It’s glorious and all I’ve ever wanted to be able to give my children after years of a block paved yard.

Chickens, ponds, polytunnel and veg patch. Rabbits, swing, lots of grass and a ditch we jumped over to the field next door

Front garden had a hydrangea hedge along the front wall, lavender on one side. Bordering the path, aubretias that seemed to be in flower for most of the year. There were various small rose bushes and an enormous Peace rose bush

Back garden - huge hydrangea near the back door . Borders on one side I can only remember a weigela and a rose bush with small deep pink roses. The other side had a big deep red rose spilling over the top of the coal bunker, a couple of half standard Queen Elizabeth roses, various perennials including crimson peonies , orange oriental poppies, aquilegia, red hot poker, lupins and pink oxalis

A shed, which stored bikes and tools and which the cats slept in at night in a woolly-lined cardboard box. Big male holly tree, a lacklustre too-shady rockery and a big old cooking apple tree which could be climbed and had a branch perfect for pretending horse riding.

Oh, yes I had forgotten about the hedge of Queen Elizabeth Roses. We were the end of a cul de sac,it used to flood, eventually a big drainage system was put in. Also forgot my DF always had a boat.

DGPs bought a corner house in south London in the mid 1950s and the garden was huge. Two lawns, an apple tree and a big veg/flower plot - I remember runner beans and the most lovely dahlias. DGF grew Queen Elizabeth roses in one bed; they were pruned in March and by August I had to stand on a chair to cut them. He had a greenhouse attached to the house for potting and taking cuttings and a little shed at the top behind a lilac tree for things like the lawnmower. DGF loved that garden (it got him away from DGM, for one thing).

My childhood home was Edwardian with a vast beautiful garden. It had a large patio, paths that led round it, an ornate pond, a wild flower patch, weeping willow, apple trees, a hedge of Rhodedendron, two huge beds of roses. It had steps down to another path that led to woodland at the back. It was a beautifully kept mature garden.

The house was sold after my mum's death as it was too much for my dad. I was really devastated to see that the new occupiers had ripped the whole thing out and flattened it. There was a trampoline where the pond had been. Of course it was their house to do what they wanted but I couldn't understand why they'd want to do that to such a beautiful space. I have very fond memories of that house and especially the garden. It was magical.

The back garden was a rectangle, wider than than it was long. French doors from the dining room at one end of the house and a single door from the utility at the other end opened onto a sunken patio that ran the full width of the house, but did not continue behind the garage at the side..

There was a large step up at the side and the back of the patio to the main garden level. At the utility end this connected to a path that led to the rotary washing line. Along the rest of the patio was a row of blackcurrant and gosseberry bushes dividing patio from lawn.

At the right hand side, of the lawn heading towards the back fence was a large raspberry patch, then a sandpit, then the washing line.

At the left hand side was a bed containing 3 apple trees.

At the far side of the lawn there was a low rockery running most of the width of the garden, with a gap at each end for access to the veg patch that ran the full width of the bottom of the garden.

At the far left of the veg patch was the rhubarb, with the shed behind it, and compost pit behind that. To the right of the rhubarb a mint patch that had got rather out of hand, and then the man veg area which I remember as being primarily beans (broad, then runner) and peas. It was heavy clay, so not good for root crops. At the far right of the veg area, a strawberry patch.

There were no flowers in the back apart from the rockery. Flowers were for the front garden (mainly roses and montbretia).

A shed for climbing and jumping off, a slatted fence for climbing, a big tree for climbing, a potato bed for digging, a den in the bushes, and a drystone wall for climbing.

There were probably some flowers for the adults too.

Front garden was surrounded by tall privet hedges,had 4 flower beds with roses,a lilac tree in one corner and hydrangeas either side of the front door.
Back garden was mainly grass with one oblong and one circular flower bed,had a cherry tree in one corner and 2 coal bunkers,one beside the back door and one behind the wooden garage. There was a large concrete hard standing area in front of the garage and a washing line ran from the corner of the garage to the corner of the house.I grew up in the 60s/70s.

Just to bring everyone down to earth - we lived in a council flat with a small balcony. Not everyone had an idyllic childhood out of E E Nesbit.

Wonderful. Typical 50s plantings of dotted loosestrife, bright red pelargoniums, beds full of HT and Floribunda roses, but also veg garden, huge cherry laurel that was my den, and a lawn which had an amazing list of wild flowers in it - I trace my current interest in wild flowers back to that.