When we are young and have absolutely no responsibilities – particularly those concerned with choosing and maintaining a family property, the thought about whether we need a garden or not doesn’t come into the equation. The answer is just YES. Mum and Dad will be good enough to get the house, pay for everything and we youngsters just needed to fill it and play outside in said garden, for as many happy hours as possible, especially in the school holidays.
Our family used to have sleepovers in make shift tents and used to make a heck of a racket, or so was reported to us. We had a fine old time and really enjoyed the outdoors. One of our gang had a massive garden and we were able to have bicycle races around it. That does seem extreme now but when thousands of families had to be moved out of London and the other major cities after the bombings of the second world war, it was deemed necessary for houses to have generous gardens for them to grow their own vegetables and fruit.
We used to live in a gorgeous village and to get to our new build road, needed to walk down a leafy tree lined lane of 1920s bungalows and large houses. They all had long front and rear gardens and every one of them was well tended and tidy. The house we have lived in for the last 24 years has a tiny garden in comparison but even now, it is proving to be too much as the back quarter is a jungle of established shrubs and rose bushes. Now that mobility ad balance issues have cropped up, it is very difficult to reach the bushes near the back fence to be able to dead head and prune them. This is the sort of issue that governs the next property to be purchased When the much loved family house proves to be several bedrooms too large and the garden becomes a rather overgrown jumble of greenery and weed. But the trees are established and we do enjoy the wild bird activity, so not all bad news.