Think about the summer memories that have actually stayed with you. The ones that get mentioned at Christmas. The ones that someone says "remember when..."
Chances are they're not from the expensive days out. They're from the afternoons that didn't have a plan. The backyard. The game that went longer than expected. The evening where nobody wanted to go home.
The best family summers happen in the backyard. Not exclusively, and not by accident — but the backyard is where the unplanned, unscheduled, genuinely connective moments tend to occur.
The thing about unstructured time
Structured activities have their place. A trip to the beach, a day out somewhere new — these create memories too. But structured activities are temporary. You go, you come back, it's over.
The backyard offers something different: a setting that's always available, always familiar, and always open for the kind of open-ended afternoon that can become something more. The game that starts at 3pm and is still going at 6pm. The conversation that only happens because everyone is relaxed and outside.
What converts a backyard from a space you sit in to a space where summers happen is having something to do in it.
The games that create those afternoons
The anchor game. Set it up and it stays out all summer — pulled in every time someone's visiting, every warm Sunday afternoon, every time the kids want something to do. Cornhole gets better with familiarity. The family that plays it through summer develops their own running jokes, their own grudge matches, their own mythology. That's what games are actually for. Not the points. The history.
The game that's been creating backyard summers across NZ and Australia for generations. The improvised rules, the argument about whether it was out, the kid who's suddenly taking it very seriously.
The BYG set gives that experience a proper home — solid wooden bat, real wickets, semi-soft ball that's safe for every backyard setting. It's the game that brings the older generations in as much as the younger ones. Grandad remembers exactly how to bat. The ten-year-old wants to prove they can bowl him out.
The game for the summer afternoon that wants some tactical depth. Kubb rewards practice and creates genuine improvement over the course of a season — the family that plays it through January gets meaningfully better, which creates its own kind of satisfaction.
It runs at a pace that suits a long afternoon: focused enough to hold attention, unhurried enough to keep conversation going alongside it. A Kubb game in the backyard is an afternoon in itself.
The game that works wherever summer takes you. On the beach, on the bach lawn, on a flat section of the backyard — Beach Tennis adapts to the setting. Two paddles, a foam ball, no court required.
No setup, no rules argument, no equipment check. Pick it up and play. It's the game you're already imagining when you picture a perfect summer afternoon somewhere flat and warm.
Make the backyard the place to be
The best summers don't happen by accident. They happen because someone made the space worth being in.
