What Gardening Meant to Me as a Child

Japanese gardens at San Antonio Botanical Gardens.

Today I was thinking of my dream garden and how I would love to be sitting on a nice bench in nice weather today. My dream garden is much of what I saw as a child in movies and TV. A well manicured garden filled to the brim with lush green. Everything in it's place looking lush and full but not so over crowded. The perfect harmony of flowers and foliage plants. I would love to have an Asian inspired garden where everything looks so balanced. I can't seem to wrap my head around how to even create that type of environment. Every time I see an Asian themed movie there are always these wonderful gardens. Wonderful water features are included with super large Koi. Flowering trees are everywhere and all these interesting shrubs and trees.


A great sun dress from Zappos.com

I some how got the image of gardening in a sun dress. I've always wanted to garden in a sun dress and thought it was the way to garden. Every women gardens in a sun dress right? Well no, maybe a few who don't really get down and dirty. That is one thing I never thought of with gardening. Dirtiness never crossed my mind in my dream garden wearing my sun dress walking on my path through lush plants. It's funny how when your younger everything looks glorified.

My favorite movie was The Secret Garden, the 1993 movie and not the one before that. Who hasn't watched that movie. That was the perfect garden to me. I wanted to be there in that movie as that girl in that great garden. Where walls were covered in ivy and climbing plants and there was a door leading to a secret garden.


Vines everywhere at the Botanical Gardens

Since seeing The Secret Garden I've seen photos of houses covered in vines. Walls covered everything covered and that I wanted in my garden. I never heard of ivy being invasive or any plant being invasive. As a young girl I thought plants all were perfect where they were put and grew to whatever size and never thought to be a problem.


Rose Garden at the Botanical Gardens

Lastly every garden would have roses, tons of them. Who hasn't seen the movies set in Victorian times with rose gardens. To me a garden had to have a rose garden. Gardens were to be sectioned off in themed parts. There were to be walls made from large shrubs that you could walk through making some sort of maze, and perfect symmetry. That was what garden wall all about to me as a young girl. I thought it to all be perfect and piece together.

All those images of the perfect garden has influenced my thought of the perfect garden now. I still want all the things I wanted as a young girl. That sun dress in the perfectly put together garden with large shrub walls, roses, ivy, and a secret garden but Asian inspired.