Full disclosure. I was born in England, so when I talk about my childhood garden, I mean the whole thing - not just the veggie part. In England, the vegetable part is called … the vegetable garden. But the entirety is just “the garden” - flowers, cauliflowers, grass, roses, apples - the whole kit and caboodle. A “yard” in England is a piece of land next to a house, not necessarily for growing things. There - now that’s straightened out, let’s head out to my childhood garden.
I grew up in Surrey in the south of England. My dad was a very keen gardener; my mum not so much. We had a big garden and many of my childhood memories involve carefully picking the weeds out of the crazy paving and using enormous shears to cut the grass around the flower beds.
Dad’s pride and joy (actually one of many) was his herbaceous border (he called it his “herby border”) which ran along one side of the driveway. Not being a very keen gardener myself, I’m guessing at some of the flowers but I know there were many dahlias which Dad would religiously lift every autumn and bury in the compost pile to over-winter. I remember the huge blooms, bright yellow ones with long whispery tendrils, and small purple ones that looked like Christmas decorations. There were tall delphiniums (delphinia?) at the back of the bed and all along the edge were low-growing flowers, maybe primroses and crocus.
One year Mum ordered daffodil bulbs which we planted all over the place to surprise Dad in the spring. I seem to remember that we had to point them out to him so he could be suitably grateful - he thought everything that happened in the garden happened because of him.
The rose garden was four large beds in a separate hedged area with a birdbath in the centre. I don’t remember being involved in the life cycle of the roses. I think they were too precious. But I do remember the smell in the summer and the beautiful deep red, velvety petals.
There was a greenhouse where Dad would potter for ages, carefully building wooden trays for his seedlings. My job was to help with transplanting the little seedlings and I was awarded a small flower bed of my own, probably to encourage my innate gardening instinct which sadly never really blossomed.
And then there was the grass — a lot of it and some of it very difficult to mow. Whoever initially designed the garden decided that some hills and valleys would make for an interesting perspective. That person never wielded an ancient push mower. We had a grass tennis court, another of Dad’s pride and joys. Before his friends came over to play tennis, it was my job to scour the court for “whiskers,” the long, tough stalks of grass that the mower had decided not to deal with. I can picture myself lying on the grass so that I got a worm’s eye view of where the damn whiskers were so I could pull them out. Heaven forbid that a tennis ball should bounce awkwardly after landing on a whisker. The tennis court was surrounded by nets to stop errant balls from escaping and these had to be looped up every night. When this task was forgotten, there were sometimes hedgehogs caught in the netting which had to be freed. A large pair of leather gloves was kept in the greenhouse for this and luckily, I was too young to take part, as the hedgehogs were not usually very keen participants in the ritual.
We had a large section of the garden given over to fruits and vegetables. My parents were thrifty and we grew most of what we ate. I remember helping to cover the red currant bushes with netting to keep the birds from eating the fruit. There were apple trees, gooseberries, raspberries and all kinds of vegetables which required lots of digging. At one time we also had chickens of which I was terrified. And my pet graveyard was right at the back of the garden - memorials to various hamsters, budgies and fish.
It was a large garden and it kept my Dad busy on weekends when he was not working in London. We did have a gardener to do the heavy work but there were four of us children and we were all roped in to help.
The garden always looked lovely, summer and winter. When I was a child, there was always snow in the winter and one year my brother (a teenager at the time) sculpted a luscious, naked, snowlady on the front lawn much to my mother’s horror. She didn’t last long (the snow lady, not my mother).
Sadly my Dad died at the age of 60, just as he was looking forward to retirement years spent in his beloved garden. My Mum had to sell the house as it and the garden were too much for us but the memories are still there as well as old photographs; me in a snowsuit under the Japanese maple, Mum drinking a cup of tea on the lawn, my sister sunbathing. And always my Dad, looking proudly on.
This column is provided courtesy of the Saskatchewan Perennial Society (SPS; [email protected]). Check our website () or Facebook page () for a list of upcoming gardening events.
