By: Leah Mercado
When I was around five years old, my grandmother passed away, but one of the most prominent memories I have of her, was building a backyard garden together. She wanted to teach me everything she knew about the art form that was and is gardening. We set out to create a big backyard garden in a very dead piece of land.
We started out on our mission to create a successful garden by digging up the area and planning exactly where everything would go. Now because I was so young I do not remember what exactly we planted but I do remember that it was a large variety of everything. Once the hard work was done of getting everything planted, the garden started thriving! We were so impressed how our hard work truly paid off. After everything started to grow, we noticed that an intruder had entered our garden.
What our garden looked like with all the various plants. (Credit: Lovely Garden https://lovelygreens.com/how-to-draw-a-simple-garden-plan/)
The intruder is what I remember most about growing this garden with my grandmother. The intruder in question was a deer. This was a big challenge for us because the truth is you can not just put up a little fence and they are gone, this is a very determined species. Of course we recruited the best carpenter we knew, my grandfather, to build us an impenetrable fence. This was house like, with wood frames and chicken coop wire as the walls and roof, and even had a functioning door. I remember when we first walked in our new garden, and undid our rope lock to our front door of the garden, we started laughing so much because of how ridiculous this garden had gotten. My advice would be to actually research the “intruder” you have and not just assume if you build a over the top structure they will stay out, just search up hacks, as I learned that probably should have been our course of action because building the enclosed garden prevented us from gardening more.
A visual idea of what our garden looked like. Credit: (The country basket https://thecountrybasket.com/building-our-vegetable-garden-fence-w-pictures/)
This gardening adventure with my grandma taught me so much about determination and to still have fun while accomplishing your goals, and I will carry this garden memory with me for the rest of my life.
Picture of my grandmother and grandfather. Credit: photo of the photo taken by Nicole Mercado
- Written by: Leah Mercado