When we brought our house, the garden was a neat rectangle lawn and Spirea shrub hedging to both sides. As a non gardener at the time, I thought, what a lovely best garden. What I was really thinking was " at least I haven't go to do much to that so I can cncentrate on the house"
20 odd years later and after my neighbour gave me some Phlox divisions and a perennial fuchsia, i was hooked. I now consider myself a qualified gardener and have carried
numerous garden make overs. It's is now my full time work and pastime. The beauty of a garden whether its a cottage, minimal, contemporary always give me enormous pleasure. I am retiring from my garden work later this year and will then fully concentrate on my own garden. Bellieve me, that gives me the most pleasure
My nan was a widow and lived in a semi detached house. The back garden had been turned over to growing mainly potatoes and other veg during the war. Straight concrete path down the middle with a washing line. In the early sixties my dad grassed it over for her for easy maintenance, leaving four fruit trees. Just by the side gate (and the bins!), was a little patch of soil, lined with "soldier style" bricks, and this was my little patch. This started me off sowing seeds which grew into a lifetime love of gardening.The front garden had a lozenge shaped lawn with rosebushes, and every year l would "help" plant the red salvias and blue lobelia all around the edge.
I pass this house quite often and 55 years on, although it is now covered by brick paving and cars, I can still see that lawn and those rose bushes
Easy it's in my DNA. My paternal grandfather came from a farming family but walked to London to become a policeman. My dad & all his brothers gardened, Grandad rented plots of land and they grew their food before formal Allotments were established. I too "helped" my father on the then established Allotments I was his shadow for all my growing up years. (He was a very patient man). I have only been without an Allotment for a few short years of a misspent youth when I discovered Motorbikes, Beer, & girls. When mum & dad retired to Devon me & my brother "inherited" his plots & kept them up till I moved away and got my own plots locally. I can't imagine life without growing plants both for food and as ornamentals.
I grew up living on a small holding in what was then a small village surrounded by Market Gardens, a very fruitful area you could say my Uncles had farms close by with walled gardens as ours was. Those gardens fed the family and extended family at a time when supermarkets did not exist in the form they have today. I had my chores feeding animals mucking out and best of all helping in the garden, I had the best tutor as my dad would forgive my mistakes. It was knowledge of rotation of crops, what when and where to sow, Hot beds, resting, preparation and we had a huge midden for compost mainly horse muck which I would turn producing the best compost ever apart from the hot beds assembled every year which needed a lot of fresh manure to give the heat needed for early crops. Today the garden is ornamental with some fruit and salad crops, lawns for the Grandchildren and dogs to play on (not my dogs theirs) at weekends. A wonky knee and stiff back slow you down, the brain may be 21 but it has not kept up with the nature of things.
The Market Gardens are gone, now housing estates, Dads old garden now has a large detached house on it and the rest divided into three gardens, a secret peek in one day saw some lovely vegetables just as it used to grow. Nothing stays the same yet I now see veg patches again where once there was decking, lawns get smaller as people develop flower beds, people are getting the taste of food with the soil attached to the roots as we had, no bad thing there could well be a renaissance on the way.
When I was little we moved around quite a lot and for a few years rented a house on a steep slope. In the winter we had our own bobsled run down it which ended in the chainlink fence at the bottom. In the summer my parents let me have a tiny patch of my own where I grew pennyroyal (because it seemed so romantic) and what was there already--Cerastium tomentosum. In a later garden I was allowed to buy and plant a Hybrid Tea rose, 'Peace', and I think the most exciting moment of my gardening career was seeing its first flower open.
After that, I went off to university and didn't have a garden for many years. But my boyfriend moved to a small flat on the ground floor so I decided to liven things up with some daffodils and annuals. But to my surprise a lot of things didn't work.
So I went to our local library and began to read lots of books, I read Rosemary Verey and Penelope Hobhouse, and Christopher Lloyd when I discovered him, and I asked for the Readers' Digest Gardening Encyclopedia for Christmas, then other plant books by Graham Stuart Thomas and the RHS, and then specialised gardening books on particular genera. And all the while I was visiting garden centres and nurseries and garden fairs. So you might say my interest began as a bit of an over-reaction to failure...
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When we brought our house, the garden was a neat rectangle lawn and Spirea shrub hedging to both sides. As a non gardener at the time, I thought, what a lovely best garden. What I was really thinking was " at least I haven't go to do much to that so I can cncentrate on the house"
20 odd years later and after my neighbour gave me some Phlox divisions and a perennial fuchsia, i was hooked. I now consider myself a qualified gardener and have carried
continued
numerous garden make overs. It's is now my full time work and pastime. The beauty of a garden whether its a cottage, minimal, contemporary always give me enormous pleasure. I am retiring from my garden work later this year and will then fully concentrate on my own garden. Bellieve me, that gives me the most pleasure
My nan was a widow and lived in a semi detached house. The back garden had been turned over to growing mainly potatoes and other veg during the war. Straight concrete path down the middle with a washing line. In the early sixties my dad grassed it over for her for easy maintenance, leaving four fruit trees. Just by the side gate (and the bins!), was a little patch of soil, lined with "soldier style" bricks, and this was my little patch. This started me off sowing seeds which grew into a lifetime love of gardening.The front garden had a lozenge shaped lawn with rosebushes, and every year l would "help" plant the red salvias and blue lobelia all around the edge.
I pass this house quite often and 55 years on, although it is now covered by brick paving and cars, I can still see that lawn and those rose bushes
Last edited: 24 January 2018 20:54:23
Easy it's in my DNA. My paternal grandfather came from a farming family but walked to London to become a policeman. My dad & all his brothers gardened, Grandad rented plots of land and they grew their food before formal Allotments were established. I too "helped" my father on the then established Allotments I was his shadow for all my growing up years. (He was a very patient man). I have only been without an Allotment for a few short years of a misspent youth when I discovered Motorbikes, Beer, & girls. When mum & dad retired to Devon me & my brother "inherited" his plots & kept them up till I moved away and got my own plots locally. I can't imagine life without growing plants both for food and as ornamentals.
I grew up living on a small holding in what was then a small village surrounded by Market Gardens, a very fruitful area you could say my Uncles had farms close by with walled gardens as ours was. Those gardens fed the family and extended family at a time when supermarkets did not exist in the form they have today. I had my chores feeding animals mucking out and best of all helping in the garden, I had the best tutor as my dad would forgive my mistakes. It was knowledge of rotation of crops, what when and where to sow, Hot beds, resting, preparation and we had a huge midden for compost mainly horse muck which I would turn producing the best compost ever apart from the hot beds assembled every year which needed a lot of fresh manure to give the heat needed for early crops. Today the garden is ornamental with some fruit and salad crops, lawns for the Grandchildren and dogs to play on (not my dogs theirs) at weekends. A wonky knee and stiff back slow you down, the brain may be 21 but it has not kept up with the nature of things.
The Market Gardens are gone, now housing estates, Dads old garden now has a large detached house on it and the rest divided into three gardens, a secret peek in one day saw some lovely vegetables just as it used to grow. Nothing stays the same yet I now see veg patches again where once there was decking, lawns get smaller as people develop flower beds, people are getting the taste of food with the soil attached to the roots as we had, no bad thing there could well be a renaissance on the way.
Frank.
When I was little we moved around quite a lot and for a few years rented a house on a steep slope. In the winter we had our own bobsled run down it which ended in the chainlink fence at the bottom. In the summer my parents let me have a tiny patch of my own where I grew pennyroyal (because it seemed so romantic) and what was there already--Cerastium tomentosum. In a later garden I was allowed to buy and plant a Hybrid Tea rose, 'Peace', and I think the most exciting moment of my gardening career was seeing its first flower open.
After that, I went off to university and didn't have a garden for many years. But my boyfriend moved to a small flat on the ground floor so I decided to liven things up with some daffodils and annuals. But to my surprise a lot of things didn't work.
So I went to our local library and began to read lots of books, I read Rosemary Verey and Penelope Hobhouse, and Christopher Lloyd when I discovered him, and I asked for the Readers' Digest Gardening Encyclopedia for Christmas, then other plant books by Graham Stuart Thomas and the RHS, and then specialised gardening books on particular genera. And all the while I was visiting garden centres and nurseries and garden fairs. So you might say my interest began as a bit of an over-reaction to failure...