Our own gardens in Coventry

Hello all Weather permitting, the last week in February was always the first serious outing of garden tools in our home. It was for my mum & dad. My home in Sewall Highway with a very small front & back garden had a very traditional bit of lawn (sorry, grass), a few flower borders, a small paved area & that was about it, all kept in place by privet. How all of those names have changed, what hey! With the onset of garden centres, the late Percy Thrower, in his unglazed inside studio green house does not stand a chance nowadays! Living in Holbrooks for forty four years, our garden (the oddest shape you ever did see) goes around the house, there are a few pics on our gallery. We have a section that we call the 'Wilderness' where we use the green ecology excuse that it is for the wildlife. The one thing that I did not want was a 'Noddy' garden, with every inch manicured like a billiard table, but then that is me. We have chosen to live in a suburb, so it is a suburban garden, our outdoor rooms, where we can pretend that we are in the middle of sticks, but in five minutes can walk to Morrisons. We can't have it all roads, my dad used to say. So, we have woken up our neighbours at 11am with the sounds of a petrol strimmer & an electric grass cutter. Those sounds are different from my Sewall Highway days. Hey! What's a strimmer anyway? ps. We miss the sound of the back & forward push mowers.

We never had a proper garden in Coronation Road, just a back yard. The only thing growing in it was weeds and and some honeysuckle which came over from the fence next door. My dad called it Woodbine and used to tell me that his cigarettes were made from it (he always smoked Woodbines). There was also a couple of dogs buried under the earth as my dad disposed of our pets that way after they had died. We used to put on a concert for the smaller children in our street in the back yard. We would borrow one of mum's old sheets, drape it over the washing line to make a curtain and then perform a little play. I can see my mum now hanging out of the bedroom window watching us with a smile on her face. There was no garden at the front either as it was a case of straight off the pavement into the front room.

Our house sounds like the same as yours, Mayjan, in Lime Tree Avenue, straight in the front door, left to the back parlour or right into the front room or straight up the stairs from the front door, so we did have a garden in the front. It seemed big at the time but looking in on Google it was not very big at all. However, there was a very long back garden but it grew very wild but my father managed to grow a few vegies, because he was at the Standard and did a lot of night shifts and being in the Home Guard took up a lot of his time. He did grow runner beans by the million though, beans, beans and more beans and potatoes. Also we were fortunate enough to get wild mushrooms at times. I don't remember seeing many flowers, only a few nasturtiums which were always covered in caterpillars. Goodness, the things we remember. After we left Lime Tree, and eventually went into the Navigation pub he was in his element and grew almost everything. After closing time he would have his lunch and you would always find him in the garden. So I know I get my green thumb from him. I love to potter out there - or rather here. Now, we have a lemon, orange, mandarin and just started to pick the mangoes here. Tony, my husband did have an allotment when we lived in Chapelfields and it contained a Russet apple tree, never tasted anything like it. Of course we had an abundance of - you've guessed it - runner beans as well as broad beans and onions. Oh those onions, we had so many I had to pickle them. I had better stop or Rob will be calling for 'time out'.

All of my experiences with gardens in Coventry have been a disaster. As kids all we ever wanted to dig was dig holes in them looking for buried treasure, or better still, an unexploded bomb! Our wish for the latter was very almost granted too as one was found a couple of years ago directly under the wasteground in Bond Street where we used to dig! Digging in our back garden in Gosford Street we once struck a wooden box of the type normally used to hold cigars. Somebody many years earlier obviously had a sense of humour as it was stuffed full of old medallions of no real value! Digging even further down we discovered a layer of perfectly preserved sandstone flagstones. I now know these to have been part of the precinct of Whitefriars Monastery but the whole area was bulldozed when the Gosford Street flyover was constructed so are now lost forever

Dutchman, I would think a lot of trash or treasure would have been dug over after the war years, but I expect it depended on where you lived

After an exhausting morning in Coventry, you know how it is along with a breakfast with a friend at Café Italia, always nice to come home. With a much welcomed greeting from the lady indoors.

Your garden looks wonderful Phillip well done Pam

Let her out, Philip

When we were kids we had a large garden in Telfer Road, like Dutchman my eldest brother and sister dug a very large hole looking for treasure, my mum used to grow redcurrants, blackcurrants, and a large gooseberry bush at the top by my dad's wooden car garage, a few flowers and grass for us to play with a swing. When mum moved to Sadler Road the garden was a decent size there too. When I had a garden of my own in Lowe Road it was big enough to fit an outdoor swimming pool. I dug it all over and grew grass and in the borders I made flowers, near the house with 40 3x2 slabs I bought from Keresley Grange School playground when it was being demolished to rebuild, I slabbed an area for the dog we had. Top of Lowe Road Garden and bottom part Later I moved to a smaller garden and took on two allotments on the Radford Road allotments where I grew veg. This is one side of the top half of my garden where I live now which has slightly been altered to a Japanese garden easier to keep. My 8yr old granddaughter has her lettuce and strawberries which she planted in pots in my garden too. Edited by member, 28th Jun 2014 2:54 pm

Your garden looks wonderful Philip, well done Pam

Hi all The last of our outdoor tomatoes. Just two "big" pot plants have kept us supplied with toms since June.

Hi all Hope all ok. Our lovely council have issued these today. We in our home hardly have any food waste. We eat everything in sight, except the peel & stuff, all of which goes in the compost bin. So we thank the council for a very handy garden lunch box. It is so kind of them, hey.

Good afternoon Philip, Those gizmos are excellent. My daughter has one and the waste, when rotted down, produces excellent fertilizer, but be warned, and wear a gas mask, the 'PONG' is a killer! Even her dog backs off. Our council is not so obliging, she had to buy her's.

Philip. We've had them for about three years here in Wigan, never use them, they are a waste of time and money. Tell Pam to just wrap everything into old newspaper then put it in the green bin paper and all (by the way, we don't pay for the green bin yet) Edited by member, 5th Sep 2017 12:26 pm

They obviously didn't research it very well, or they wouldn't have provided Philip with a food waste bin, even a small one I can't get my head around the bin system - we have three, blue, brown and green. The brown one is for what went in the green one in Binley Woods I saw a house locally the other day with two green bins outside for collection - on one was painted in large white letters on each side "Blue Bin" I was in Birmingham last week and I saw there were grey bins awaiting collection - in Liverpool there are purple bins