Garden Memories

[julesapple]

I was just posting on the New Shoots thread about growing your first spuds, and mentioned lifting new potatoes with my Nan nearly 40 years ago. I have loads of memories about my Nan's garden, and also my Scottish Granda's garden with it's hedge of red & white currants, and it's yellow raspberries. And, after leaving the RAF, my parent's first garden, in the first house they ever owned, trying to grow veggies to help save money in the darkest dankest garden imaginable in the heatwave of 1976.

What about your childhood or favourite garden memories?

Jules

[sweetiepea]

At home: dad growing veg in the back garden, potatoes, cabbage, carrots, sprouts etc, and the best dahlias I've ever seen (Slugs destroy mine) At school: my brother used to help the caretaker who had a few flower and veg beds at the back of the school, under the classroom windows. Best of all were at my Granny's (in Louth and Mayo) for our summer and Christmas holidays ... fresh eggs, milk straight from the cow, homemade butter, picking blackberries and hazelnuts, delicious cabbages and Kerr’s Pinks (spuds to die for - still my favourite), and, dare I say it.. fresh chicken (yum!), and newborn chicks in the oven (no not to eat, just to keep warm!).

[Becca]

All nostalgic now.. at home, nothing very horticultural, guinea pigs, the free-range rabbit (wouldn't live in a hutch so he came to the back door at night and bedded down in the kitchen), wanting to keep chooks but wasn't allowed in the deeds, general mucking about, climbing trees, making dens and having pet worms!
At my nan and grandads - much nicer garden cos we weren't in it much - proper flowers, the smell of tomatoes in the greenhouse and spinning on the rotary clothes line, sitting on the patio in an old tin bath of a very hot day
My other nan's - runner beans, falling in the fishpond and the smell of roast potatoes wafting down the garden path every time we got there.. I was always carsick, and too this day I still fancy roasties after an arduous journey
Uncle Fred's - the worlds biggest potatoes (or so it seems) a good way to impress an 8 year old is to give them chips the length of their plate!

[Glutton4...]

Picking Strawberries and eating them with cream and sugar. Also shelling freshly picked peas for dinner, and eating most of them raw! This was at my Nan and Grandad's, who were keen gardeners. My Nan was also the world's best sponge and scone maker - aah the smell!

[Comfreyfan]

Staying with my cousin in the summer and the pair of us sneaking out of the bungalow bedroom window after lights out and sitting in the veg patch crunching our way through my uncle's precious carrots, peas and runner beans!

[chrispy]

when i was a nipper, my mum used to work on a fruit farm in Essex, and i could be mostly found eating fruit of all varieties. Even now the varieties i grow hark back to that farm even if there are better varieties around now (nostalgia).
And when my Gran was living in Ditchling, Sussex, she had so much clay in her garden, we dug some up and made a Tracey Island ( off of Blue Peter )........cor blimey......happy days

[Flummery]

My dad grew french beans (Mam used to call them kidney beans) and we wouldn't touch them - philistines! He also grew Outdoor Girl and Sigmabush tomatoes, new potatoes and carrots. We kids were allowed to lift a root of spuds for supper - fresh with butter! My sister used to sneak carrots, wipe them under her arm and eat them straight from the garden. Dad pretended he didn't know - she wouldn't eat veg at dinner time!
Nanna and Grandad had the most fantastic soft fruit garden. This would be in the 50s when the Dig for Victory campaign was still in people's memories.

[jackie j]

Being in the garden with my dad if he took his top off so did I, well I was under 6years old lol dad grew roses and dahlia's in the front garden, something I have in my garden as well as london's pride, sweet williams and wallflowers were another favourite of both my mum and dad. One thing I do remember is an apple tree in the back garden and being a council house the garden was big, we used to ask if we could pick an apple and mum would say yes but only one each and dont go picking enough for the whole street, well we would stand and throw them to our friends who were in another garden, not the one next door but the one next door to that, as I was only little ( left that house when I was 11 ) more than often they fell into the garden next door lol. We would then go past mum and show her we only had one apple each. My sister and I often talk about dad and his garden, I just wish he had lived longer to teach me more, but it must be in my genes.

[Hilary B]

Dad grew tomatoes most years (no idea of the variety, it was what was for sale) and Runner beans (scarlet emperor). It was my job to take sideshoots off the tomato plants.
He always planted alysum (white), lobelia (deep blue) and salvias (red), and usually gladioli (his favourite colours were scarlet and lime green) and/or antirhinum (one very pale cream, one as near black as he could get). Then there was the apple tree, the damson, rhubarb, blackcurrants. Rose bushes (assorted, some of them Harry Wheatcroft varieties) lemon balm, jasmine, lily-of-the-valley, double daffodils, primroses, 'ice plant', peonies white lilac, lavendar and rosemary bushes. The laburnum was next door, but most of the flower-plumes were on our side.....

[julesapple]

Opposites

Reading through the replies, it seems that head gardeners in most familes were Dad or Grandad.

My Mum is the main gardener in our family. My Dad always helped with heavy work though, and when we moved to Glasgow in 1980, he built a 2ft wall around the large front garden with all of the bricks that he & mum dug out of the gardens back & front - all 342 of them!

If I need house maintenance, plumbing or electrical help I shout for Dad, but Mum is the garden advisor.

Flummery, the National Trust are trying to reinstate the Dig for Victory campaign. There's an article in the GYO mag about it. For more info visit

The National Trust

Jules

[Flummery]

I've been digging for victory all my life. I have many minor victories most years too. The odd failure just adds to the compost pile!

[HeyWayne]

I'm not really from horticultural stock, we just had grass and a few odd plants here and there. I remember using a little mound we had on our lawn (not a big garden) as a ramp and trying to get airborne on my Raleigh Budgie.

I probably spent more time in the garage with my dad helping fix cars.

[bluemoon]

Both Grandads grew their own and the flavour of my own homegrown takes me back just about every day, but the think which really reminds me of childhood is the scent of sweet peas.

[Creemteez]

S'funny, but I always go for the seed varieties my dad used to buy. Scarlet Emperor runner beans, Gardeners Delight, Alicante and Money Maker tomatoes, Webbs Wonderful lettuce.
He used to have a lottie and it was always me that went with him. I used to follow him along the rows as he dug pulling out the weed roots and had my own little patch where I grew spring onions and radishes.
He had an aunt who lived in Surrey and we visited once when her plum tree was full of the most humungous blue/black plums ever. They seemed to be the size of a grapefruit to me and I can still taste them now. Mum remembers that visit and says I was two years old!