You have to admitt: Small children and a beautiful, well-tended garden paradise with a lush green lawn, beautifully flowering borders and tasteful decorations cannot be combined. At least not without barbed wire bridle ...

I've always wished for three wonderful children. But if the three of the organized mob explore the surrounding area, that usually doesn't mean anything good for my shrubs and trees. I'm not even talking about the flowerpots yet.

With these stories that really happened to us, I would like to explain to hopeful future garden owners (or hopeful future parents) what to expect when one thing comes to the other!

1. The flower massacre or how my spring gardener's heart broke

It was Easter. My sister was visiting with her children.

The children played in the garden and we were happy to be able to have a nice uninteruptet chat. .

Step, step, step. My middle daughter came trampling up. "Mom", she shouted "We have already earned seven euros, you have to come IMMEDIATELY and take a look at our cool flower shop!"

In the flower shop (the bathroom shelf from the basement) ALL of my blooming tulips and daffodils, grape hyacinths and hyacinths  could be admired decapitated. Oh God! After the first sales successes to  the passing Easter walkers (the price was not bad, a large bouquet of exquisite tulips, freshly picked for one euro ...) the other brats eagerly provided for supplies and plucked the entire garden empty. Crack! My gardener's heart! I stared dully at the dead flowers. My spring blossom dreams melt like butter in a microwave.

Inhale, exhale and carry on...

2. The ugly trampoline

Yes, all children want to have a giant trampoline in the garden. The bigger the cooler! These things are so terribly ugly! As aesthetic as the mountain of dirty laundry after the vacation. An eyesore with plastic charm and neon colors in the natural garden. It takes up a lot of space. A flower meadow that size would probably save millions of bees.

The children constantly sprain their feet, or even their necks, while trying to learn backwards somersaults (yes, everybody knows us already at the children's emergency room).

The first trampoline flew over the two meter high forsythia hedge to the neighboring property in an autumn storm. In addition: Nothing grows under the trampoline. It's on the lawn, see below for more about lawns!

I'm looking forward to one day when the children are too big for it and find the trampoline uncool. At this point there will be a beautiful round pool of water in which the sky is reflected. With a curved, English teak bench in front of it, between two spherical maple trees, where you can enjoy the silence and admire the water lily in the water basin.

Every time I inevitably choose unfamiliar perspectives for a garden photo, just so that the ugly trampoline is not on it, I long for my future quiet garden dream.

3. Journey to the Center of the Earth

Weekend. The children had built a house with an apartment under and an apartment on the dining table, covered all with biscuits and cocoa, and had had a pillow fight in the living room. It looked as if a gang of mannerless burglars had searched the apartment for unfortunately not existing cash reserves.

"Everyone out!" I sent the children to the garden. When I searched for the children after vacuuming, mopping, cleaning carpets and washing pillowcases, they had dug a hole  in the  forest corner that was so deep that the geothermal energy could be felt. Practically a shortcut to Australia. In any case, so deep that the smallest (first grader at the time) disappeared up to her neck into it. Haha! So funny! After all, not in the lawn.

My husband needed a lot of muscle power until he filled this "trap" again.

4. Balls

Sure, balls are really great: hand-eye coordination, dexterity, endurance ... Softballs for example are really great. But how stupid is it to give the little kids a really heavy basketball as a present? (Thank you, Dad!). You should not forget to give the glass insurance on top. Tripping on the grass leaves marks on the lawn like elephant footprints. After a bump on the head of the little one (howl ...) the new ball flew onto the neighboring property. Oahh! What a pity!

And yes, children, if you're reading this, the neighbor threw the ball back the same evening and it is still in the hall closet under the snow pants, I know for sure that otherwise the garage window would have been crashed

5. No time for gardening

Children and  a beautiful garden also do not combine, because parents with (perhaps even several) small children simply do not have time for gardening:  parents' meetings in kindergarten on dwarf chairs. Taking children to swimming lessons, flute lessons, , judo, and sports festivals and pick them up again. Getting vegan or sugar-free children's birthday gifts. Baking cakes for the summer party (with an allergen list, of course). Attending creative parents' Advent projects in school. Taking photos of the performances of the music school, the sports club, the medieval project week . Not to mention working and making money. You have to keep an eye on the little ones. Otherwise they'll make slime again after a secret recipe that clogs the drainpipes. And to getting them free again also eats up a lot of time. It also stinks worse than baby excrement after the first meat-lunch.

You can't crawl around in flower beds undisturbed ...

6. Modder mess

Modding is great for the kids. Promotes sensory and motor skills! Very important!

Im am fine with modding, if you can turn the ugly ducklings into beautiful, clean swans with the garden hose before they approach the house. 

In reality, however, one of the lovely little ones is guaranteed to have a terrible urge to pee when the entire surface of the body has just been embalmed with clay water and breaded with sand by the siblings. Throughout the house you can see the way to relief from the distress by means of the brown footsteps. I wanted to clean the toilet again anyway. 

The drain had a problem here again, when I put all the Neanderthal children in the bathtub and tried to wash their hair clean again.

7. Blowing dandelions on the lawn

Children love dandelions. Hundreds of little umbrellas that float so beautifully through the air and then form meter-long taproots in a hundred other places and multiply exponentially with thousands of new umbrellas within a very short time ...

Okay, children, you can blow dandelions (I love it too), but would you rather do it while going for a walk than standing on the lawn?

8. Bleaching stains on clothing in a chlorinated pool

A pool in the garden is almost always just as bad an idea as the chocolate ice cream cone before the photographer's appointment.

Changing water, combating algae, fishing off dead insects, optimizing water pH and yes, chlorine. Without chlorination it becomes a green, smelly pond with mosquito larvae, vicious back swimmer beetles and other disgusting animals in no time. Splashes of chlorinated water are of course no good for the lawn. We dug in a sheet metal pool with a diameter of 3.6 meters by hand (!) And then, frustrated, dug it up again two years later.

The children used it extensively. The middle one jumped into the chlorinated pool with clothes on several times after school. Splash! The grass stains from the pants were finally out, but the red T-shirt was pink afterwards (a color that was extremely "out" for third graders at the time ...).

Yes, and there was ice skating in the pool too. It was a great pleasure, but the skates cut the foil ... After that, it was beyond saving, the pool!

9. Slipping fun on the lawn with doctor's soap

You can forgett o maintain a well-tended lawn with children anyway. They dig holes in it, put ice rinks on it or empty complete refill packs of doctor's soap on the lawn. Do you know those plastic track water slides that you can connect the garden hose to and then slide on? Such a stupid plastic toy was given to us, and the doctor's soap was used to make it slide better. So the medical soap did its job thoroughly and unfortunately not only killed bacteria and coronaviruses ...

So now you know what to expect when you mix children with  garden.

Of course, even my mother says her grandchildren are "very lively". The friend who looked after my children spoke of "very independent" children (when one of them snuck away and, under her supervision, painted its shoes with flowers). Probably all the other children are simply better brought up and are taught what is allowed and what is not right from the start. Maybe grandma and grandpa also have a lot of time and live nearby and look after the children excellently. 

If that's the case with you, please send me your parenting tips. I would be even more happy if you write me your experiences about why a well-tended garden and children cannot be reconciled. And please the funny Stories!

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