Self care by growing a garden

For me as a kid, gardens were places to play. Trees to climb, bean seeds to plant, fruit to pick and eat, poppies to turn into ballerinas, scented flowers to make "perfume" out of. We've encouraged our kids to do similar. One of our daughters was notorious for picking all the pea pods and eating out the baby peas, they've had trees as cubby houses and spaceships, "fed" us innumerable salads, soups and pies made from assorted plants and soils (red clay pumpkin soup...nyum..??), used secateurs to cut tunnels through the blackberry growing down the creek bank and cleared "rooms" inside it, picked peaches to eat as they passed the tree on their way down the driveway.

The older ones are in rented properties, so not in the best position to do lots of gardening, but I'm hoping that good memories will mean it's a "thing" for them in the future.

My childhood garden memories are from Asia where my Dad worked - so many fond memories of the garden. Mum grew hibiscus, gerberas, snapdraggons and zinnias in the flower garden and rosellas in the veg patch - would make rosella jelly. We had a tamarind tree with a commando net on it - I climbed up it and was too scared to come down and had to be rescued. We would eat the tamarind - Mum would warn us about getting sore tummies - we had a sandpit under a bunya tree. Elsewhere on the compound where we lived was an ornamental tree that we called the squirt tree - not sure what it called botanically but it had little banana shaped pods perhaps a couple of centimetres long that were liquid filled, we would scrape the top off and squirt each other with this liquid, there was also a custard apple tree.

In our current garden, pre crisis, I had started to put in plants that are favourites of family members, particularly ones that they remember from their childhood. Perhaps I need to start putting in a few of these again.

does anyone know what these flowers are?

@Catcakes@Faith-and-Hopemaybe someone here will know what they are..

thanks @Former-Member do you know every flower there is!?

well i still think your clever @Former-Member 🙂

@Catcakes@Faith-and-Hopewe know what they are now 🙂

@outlander I have grown saffron, the most expensive spice, which is the bright orange stamen from a variety of crocus.