The Lazy Susan team have got out heads together and compiled a top 10 of our favourite traditional garden games you can play this summer.
We’ve had a bit of a focus on garden games over the last month or so. We see them as a close relation of garden furniture, and our knowledge of all things garden makes us well placed to share some of our insight on this subject.
Plus, we want this blog to be a place you can discover the art of ‘Lazy Living’. A place where we can share our expertise with a wide range of articles, tips, recipes and ideas for relaxed outdoor living. And outdoor games is one such subject we hold a great deal of interest.
English Regency Reeded Hand Forged Wrought Iron Garden Games Bench For Sale At 1stdibs
This month we wanted to take a closer look at some of the more traditional garden games. This is a subject we looked at in terms of their origins in our history of garden games article, however, the Lazy Susan team were keen to get their heads together and compile a top 10 of our favourite traditional garden games you can play this summer.
We love the traditional. It is a philosophy we’ve applied to our Garden Furniture Collection. Taking a classical design style and reinventing it with modern materials and production techniques. Providing our customers with furniture that will sit on the patio for the next decade without going out of style but pieces that are constructed to stand up to the British climate and sit in our gardens all year round.
Traditional garden games are much the same. They’ve endured over the years (and centuries in many cases) because they’re fun to play and kids love them. They’ve evolved and changed to suit the time and place but the principles are still the same.
An English Garden
Skittles is played primarily in Great Britain, and for centuries it was played in public houses or clubs, mostly in western England and the Midlands, southern Wales, and southeastern Scotland. The rules and methods of scoring varied from place to place, but the basic principle of bowling a wooden or rubber ball at nine large oval-headed pins, set in diamond formation 21 feet away has remained the same.
There are so many different versions and sets you can buy, but here at Lazy Susan, it is the Mölkky version that gets our vote (pictured above). Mölkky, also known as Finska, is the Finnish throwing game invented by the Lahden Paikka company in 1996. However, it is based on a centuries-old throwing game called Kyykkä.
The Mölkky sets are beautifully made from real wood and come complete with a sturdy, made-to-measure carry crate, throwing pin, and 12 numbered skittles. It is perfect for beaches, parks, picnics, playgrounds, and of course, gardens. The video below from The Grommet shows you how the whole family can play this easy-to-learn garden game:
Britain's Outdoor Games
The Frisbee is another garden game with a long history. Originally developed as a weapon, it dates back to ancient Greece. There’s even a famous statue of Discobolus throwing a flying disc.
However, the game we know and love today began in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where William Frisbie opened the Frisbie Pie Company in 1871. According to the History Channel:
In 1948, Walter Frederick Morrison and his partner Warren Franscioni invented a plastic version of the disc called the “Flying Saucer”. After splitting with Franscioni, Morrison made an improved model in 1955 and sold it to Wham-O as the “Pluto Platter”. In 1958, a year after the toy’s first release, Wham-O, the company behind such top-sellers as the Hula-Hoop, the Super Ball and the Water Wiggle changed its name to the Frisbee, misspelling the name of the historic pie company.
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Swingball has been a hit with families for generations. This fast action, competitive ball and tether tennis game are as much of a part of the British Summertimeas the BBQ.
The game we know today as Swingball was invented in South Africa in 1967 by the golfing enthusiast, Gavin Gormley and it arrived in the UK in 1973. However, a version of “Tether Tennis” or “Totem Tennis” has been around a little longer and can be traced back to the early 1900s. According to Child of the 80s:
The Swingball tennis game was all the rage in the 1980s and allowed you to play a game of tennis in your back garden without needing to accommodate an entire tennis court, which would be beyond the rather less generous allotment of land that most people would probably have for their garden. In Swingball, the tennis ball is attached to a cord which in turn is attached to a spiral at the top of a pole, and instead of a full-size tennis racquet you play with a solid plastic bat.
English Tavern Games Table, 19th Century
What we do know at Lazy Susan is that it is great fun to play and it can greatly improve your tennis/racket skills too. Judy Murray has even suggested in the past that much of Andy’s success could be attributed to all the Swingball he used to play at their home in Scotland in his early childhood.
The water slide is one traditional garden game where history is impossible to determine. I can certainly think of photographs of children in the US slip ’n sliding in the 50s. According to Wikipedia, the folks at Wham-O were the first to officially market it as a garden game, stating that:
Slip ’n Slide is a children's toy invented by Robert Carrier and manufactured by Wham-O. It was first sold in 1961. The main form is a plastic sheet and a method of wetting it; when the surface is wet it becomes very slippery, allowing the user to slide along it.
Our Top 10 Traditional Garden Games
The creator was inspired by his son sliding on wet, painted concrete. He used his job as an upholsterer to obtain a long strip of Naugahyde, sewed a tube to pass a hose into, and punctured the tube sporadically to allow water to spurt out. Carrier sold his invention to Wham-O where they replaced Naugahyde with plastic to reduce production costs.
Now there’s a whole host of different types of lawn water slides you can buy. If you’ve got younger children, we would recommend something like the Otes Water Slide with Inflatable Arch Sprinkler (pictured above). However, if your kids are a little older, then a classic Wham-O Slip ’n Slide is the way to go (pictured below).
Quoits is another of those garden games with a fascinating and chequered history that we discussed in our history of garden games article. According to the website Historical Folk Toys:
Garden Games For Children
The game of quoits may have evolved from ancient Greece, where athletes enjoyed throwing a discus for competition. Peter Brown, president of the National Quoits Association, believes that the Greeks passed quoits to the Romans as a weapon of war.
The definition of the term “quoits” is basically a flattened ring of iron or a circle of rope that’s used in a throwing game. The game in which the quoits are thrown is generally at an upright pin and the aim is to get the ring on the pin or to come as near to it as possible.
It has been said that the game was played in Roman-occupied Britain (1st–5th century), or it may have been developed in medieval Britain, perhaps when peasants heated and bent horseshoes into rings and tossed them at iron pegs driven into the ground. Later, in the United States and Canada, horseshoe pitching became the more popular game.
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If you’re looking for a family-friendly version to play in your garden this summer, then we would suggest you take a look at the wonderful luxury set from Jaques of London (pictured below).
Their set is based on a traditional design they’ve produced for over 100 years and features a simple fit together system with an attractive natural wood finish, natural rope quoits, full instructions, and it is available from Jaques of London for £24.99.
The origins of croquet are another that’s been obscured by the sands of time and open to debate. According to The president of the Fédération Française de Croquet, Anthoine Ravez, in his brochure for the Coupe des Alpes of 1992, he stated that:
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Croquet is a very old game, widely known and practised in France since the XI century under the name of 'jeu de mail'. Borrowed by the British around 1300, it was modified over the centuries: the Scots made golf out of it, the Irish turned it into croquet.
Whilst the name “croquet” is of French origin, it is generally agreed that the game we know today originated in Ireland around 1850 where it was known as Crookey. The sport was introduced in England to the Victorians by John Jaques (yes, he of Jaques of London above) and croquet sets were first marketed to the growing middle class at The Great Exhibition of 1851.
If you’re looking for a good quality garden croquet set, then our advice would be to go for the Cottage set from Big Game Huntersfor £94.99. It's a little more expensive than some of the kid's sets but it has been specifically designed
