Buttercupdays how do yo remember the names of the plants? I just remember my dad planting ROSES OR TULIPS that's what's gets me is people now say such and such hybrid this and that how on earth do they remember ! thanks for the info .
The replies I have had have been lovely some of us can remember what our parents planted. What about war time? Was it all about veg planting? Did our lovely ancestors plant flowers or only veg?
As far as I know my family didn't grow veg at all. My aunt's house had been the one where she and my mum grew up. It had mature apple trees in the Fifties and wouldn't have had much room for veg. My earliest memory is of sitting under one of them the day my brother was born in '55. Even as a child it felt kind of 'settled', as if it had been that way a long time. I know the air raid shelter was in the garden next door as there was more room there.
I still have somewhere a seed catalogue from 1936 which belonged to my grandad. It had plenty of flowers and veg - I'll have to look it out and see which varietiies are still going. They kept chickens - this was in a tiny back street terrace in South London! Dad used to talk about their cockerel who was a terror and how you had to fend him off with the wooden spoon from the bran mash!
You asked about remembering the names - I don't know, it isn't hard because I have always known them. Mum loved her garden so the plants she bought were like personal friends to me and I grew up with them. There are one or two things that I recall that didn't have names, that were probably in the garden before they lived there. Some I have managed to track down through the internet, some I can't. There was a very pretty rose with yellow flowers that I liked that I think was possibly 'Goldfinch', but memory can't supply enough detail to be positive. Mum had a double row of raspberries and a couple of blackcurrant bushes too.
What impresses me looking back is the way we seem to have lost the links with the natural world. Novices on here ask for plant ID's on things I have 'always' known. my gran grew up in the East end of London and wasn't really a gardener but she did know a bargain when she saw one! There was a brickfield behind our house and when the workmen did a tidy up she would call up to them for some horse radish roots which got planted in the garden. Produce in the shops and markets was all seasonal, and it was part of my childhood to go out each year to see the bluebells, and collect blackberries, even though we lived in South London. My infant school had a nature table with sticky buds, catkins, frogspawn, all sorts, and we grew beans in jam jars. We had Ladybird books about all sorts including ones about plants and the countryside and I had a nature book by Enid Blyton which was full of good information. I used to know the 'Observer book of Wild Flowers' by heart! I was already a gardener though. I planted some peach stones and grew two trees when I was about 10 - the one my aunt had went on to bear fruit regularly!
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Buttercupdays how do yo remember the names of the plants? I just remember my dad planting ROSES OR TULIPS that's what's gets me is people now say such and such hybrid this and that how on earth do they remember ! thanks for the info .
The replies I have had have been lovely some of us can remember what our parents planted. What about war time? Was it all about veg planting? Did our lovely ancestors plant flowers or only veg?
As far as I know my family didn't grow veg at all. My aunt's house had been the one where she and my mum grew up. It had mature apple trees in the Fifties and wouldn't have had much room for veg. My earliest memory is of sitting under one of them the day my brother was born in '55. Even as a child it felt kind of 'settled', as if it had been that way a long time. I know the air raid shelter was in the garden next door as there was more room there.
I still have somewhere a seed catalogue from 1936 which belonged to my grandad. It had plenty of flowers and veg - I'll have to look it out and see which varietiies are still going. They kept chickens - this was in a tiny back street terrace in South London! Dad used to talk about their cockerel who was a terror and how you had to fend him off with the wooden spoon from the bran mash!
You asked about remembering the names - I don't know, it isn't hard because I have always known them. Mum loved her garden so the plants she bought were like personal friends to me and I grew up with them. There are one or two things that I recall that didn't have names, that were probably in the garden before they lived there. Some I have managed to track down through the internet, some I can't. There was a very pretty rose with yellow flowers that I liked that I think was possibly 'Goldfinch', but memory can't supply enough detail to be positive. Mum had a double row of raspberries and a couple of blackcurrant bushes too.
What impresses me looking back is the way we seem to have lost the links with the natural world. Novices on here ask for plant ID's on things I have 'always' known. my gran grew up in the East end of London and wasn't really a gardener but she did know a bargain when she saw one! There was a brickfield behind our house and when the workmen did a tidy up she would call up to them for some horse radish roots which got planted in the garden. Produce in the shops and markets was all seasonal, and it was part of my childhood to go out each year to see the bluebells, and collect blackberries, even though we lived in South London. My infant school had a nature table with sticky buds, catkins, frogspawn, all sorts, and we grew beans in jam jars. We had Ladybird books about all sorts including ones about plants and the countryside and I had a nature book by Enid Blyton which was full of good information. I used to know the 'Observer book of Wild Flowers' by heart! I was already a gardener though. I planted some peach stones and grew two trees when I was about 10 - the one my aunt had went on to bear fruit regularly!