My Mum was always the gardener, and I have vivid memories of the garden of the house where we lived until I was 15. The front garden had a small lawn, edged with rose bushes. When the roses were in bloom, they were big and yellow, tinged with orange and dark pink, and highly perfumed. The back garden had a big lawn on one side, a pebbly ridged path down the middle with a post at the end, holding up the washing line, a couple of plum trees and the rest was a bit of a wilderness. There was a bonfire area near the fence at the bottom of the garden; she loved a good bonfire! When I was about 6, I melted the soles of my new shoes walking through the ashes of a bonfire. I can remember my feet feeling lovely and warm, but the smell was dreadful.
The wilderness may have previously been used for growing vegetables, and I remember digging big holes in it and covering them with sticks and leaves, hoping to catch a heffalump. It was dug over and covered with grass seed one year, and that was how it stayed until we moved away.
There were rose bushes close to the French windows, and I must have delighted my parents by pulling off the heads of the roses to make perfume. I mixed the petals with water, stirring them together with a stick in a big white Saxa salt tub, and the smell was heavenly.
Flame orange Montbretia grew alongside the path, and the garden was bordered with trees and bushes - white and purple lilacs, quinces and ruby red peonies closer to the house and taller trees with broad bendy branches further down towards the boundaries. It was a fantastic garden for a child - lots of hidden corners and strange objects to explore. A big rusty green metal tank (I think for oil) stood in one corner, covered with climbing plants and stacked behind it were large mesh panels from an old aviary. My grandfather had bred finches, and I assume that they had come from his garden when he died in 1970. There was an old brick shed with a toilet inside, accessible by a little pathway running down from the kitchen door. I spent many days during one Summer holiday trying to transform it into a cottage, but I was limited in what I was allowed to do as there were "dangerous" chemicals in the many dark and dusty bottles stored on the shelves alongside spiders (alive and dead), cobwebs and distintegrating boxes of nails and tacks. I couldn't even pick up the bottles to move them, as I was warned that they might explode if I even touched them, so volatile were the contents. The danger had evidently passed by the time we moved out in 1985, as the shed was cleared and the bottles were tossed into a dustbin without so much as a protective glove being used. I was desperate to clear out the shed - and get rid of the toilet which was still functioning, and the cobwebs and turn it into a proper cottage - like Calamity Jane's cabin. I made curtains and hung them on a bamboo cane, balanced on two hooks, and transformed a big box with a rectangle cut out to make a fireplace. An old blanket covered the toilet pedestal and a small wicker chair with an embroidered cushion made its way into the shed from my bedroom. A little tea set, some old saucepans and pots of playdoh were brought in to help recreate a kitchen. I made a sign for the door, and renamed it "Cherry Green Cottage' - because the door was green and I wasn't allowed to paint it a prettier colour. The door had to be wedged open when I played in there, as it was so dark - the only light source being a tiny high window with thick distorted glass. At various points over the years, Cherry Green Cottage (or the toilet as it was known by everyone else) had been the home for a range of small family pets - mice, hamsters, gerbils and guinea pigs. It was also the place of death for one unfortunate guinea pig, a talented escapologist whose downfall was his inability to swim. The toilet lid was always kept down after that. I found it difficult to forget about the drowned guinea pig, and could never quite recreate that Calamity Jane cabin vibe, eventually giving up and trying desperately to get invites to play in the neighbours' garden, as they had a 'chalet', with wallpaper and proper furniture.
I was the youngest of 4, and there had been many pet deaths in our family before I came along, and I was haunted by the tales of the budgie that flew into the custard and the mouse that was left under a flowerpot and escaped through the hole in the top, never to be seen again. Lucky that all of the pets I had went happily to live out their old age on farms, and never had to suffer similar fates to their predecessors.
There was a little area at the bottom of the garden, enclosed by vertical wooden stakes, joined with twisted wire. It was a mystery to me why this section was fenced off, and the only thing of note I could find there was a sticky bud tree - a small chestnut with red sticky buds which I surmised must be very precious, and at risk to wildlife, maybe deer? There was a gap between some of the stakes, just big enough for me to climb through and I used this as a den and particularly enjoyed climbing the trees there. It became the location of choice to play Tarzan when my nieces and nephew came to play - I would usually be Tarzan, with my similarly aged niece preferring to be Jane, leaving my youngest niece at the time cast as Cheetah - the chimp.
When we got too big to get through the gap in the fence, we became a circus troupe called The Flying Loonies and put on fantastic shows of death defying bravery for the reluctant adult audiences, using the rusty old garden swing as a trapeze. And then came the arrival of Swingball, which we played until we wore it out. There were many contests, with contenders of all ages, and I could even play it on my own, which was a massive bonus for me, having been abandoned by my much older brother and sisters, and effectively an only child from the age of 7. I bought a swing ball for my kids many years ago, and bigged it up, maybe a bit too much. My attempts to whip up enthusiasm failed dismally and when this marvellous highlight of my childhood was set up and ready for them to experience, they tried it for about a minute before dismissing it as 'lame'. The same happened when I got my old stilts from the shed -'boring'. I LOVED those stilts and could walk on them for hours. My brother in law's dad made them for me, and they were another childhood triumph. It's a shame that my kids will never experience the glory of completing a homemade obstacle course on stilts. They are looking for instant gratification, and would not dream of spending days achieving mastery over stilts. I worry that they lack resilience and can't be bothered to try and try again. But maybe they don't need to any more. I hope it's not just because I am not the demon gardener that my mother was. I've never grown roses and the only plants in my garden are grass, weeds, or grow in pots. I do have a greenhouse, and every year I try to grow vegetables from seeds, but they are largely unsuccessful and do not warrant the effort it takes to grow them. Last year I managed to grow a single spiky cucumber from a whole packet of seeds. My only success in fact, is one of my proudest achievements. I grew a florist! She loves flowers, and probably takes after her grandmother. For her 18th birthday, we went to the Chelsea Flower Show.
My garden will never look like the garden of my childhood, and my children's memories will be very different from my own. Different, but hopefully equally happy.
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