Mesembryanthemum criniflorum. A neighbour grew them every year and I was transfixed by them. Also the first botanical name I ever learned , aged about 10.
I had a little patch of garden at our rented house in Germany when I was about 5, I think. (Dad was in the RAF.) I grew carrots, and the smell when you pulled one up was just amazing.
Since 2019 I've lived in east Clare, in the west of Ireland.
When my wife and I brought our last house there wasn’t a lot of colour or form in the garden apart from a row of neglected rose bushes and a bush that was just coming in to flower. When I saw the abundance of flowers from this particular bush I was inquisitive to find out it’s name (at that point there was no gardening bug in my blood) My new neighbour, who’s garden was a beautiful and loved creation, informed me of the name of that particular fushsia. He added that he had given it to the last owners as a cutting he had made and with out any care for it had flourished in to a lovely plant From that day I was hook and line caught up in what I could create in my new garden. I took cutting of that fuchsia and produced and planted out many. Now, I love my garden and enjoy propagating plants for my own garden and for friends and family.
Planted an apple seed from one I was eating when I was small and when it grew too big to keep in a pot my parent's neighbors who had a bigger garden adopted it and the last time I saw it it was a fairly good sized tree and had some apples on it. Never got to taste how the apples tasted afterwards as my mother and the neighbors had a bit of a falling out and I did not spend as much time next door. They also gave me some strawberry plants from runners that I remember preparing terraces for on a sloping part of my parents back garden but the slugs got at the fruit before I could. They also gave my parents some rhubarb and black currant plants that I have propagated by division and cuttings and still have growing where I am currently living. Last year I even gave my parents back some divisions of the rhubarb which they had left get overgrown in their own garden. Must have over a hundred of the black currant plants still growing from the small few plants I started with about thirty years back. Must have started an interest in fruit since I continue to add to the varieties I grow with a white currant planted for the first time last autumn. Here is a video clip showing how the fruit garden I got growing in the parents back garden was looking a few years back.
May I alter the 'rules' slightly & opt for three vegetables & three flowers too?
Peas, Potatoes & Carrots - planting, picking & eating them all in turn!! [with some assistance from a grandfather on my Mother's side]. Whereas the flowers are all courtesy of my paternal grandad: he was a miner and was devoted to his roses, roses all the way! I soon learnt to avoid the thorns - whilst savouring the delicious heady scents!! Plus Vinca major & Hearts-lie-bleeding from Grandma M - my job was to inspect behind the vinca growing up the veranda wall for snails of any variety!! Happy days!!
I am the youngest of 4 children and we each had a small plot in a row at the bottom of the garden. As the others each gave up my garden just got bigger. I kept it even after I was married (at 19) as we moved in with his parents. At one time I made decent pocket money from my strawberries and raspberries. Dad mowed the lawn and cut the hedges but Mum did the rest. I didn't realise it at the time but she grew loads of fruit and veg which she preserved in many ways for eating later because we were cash poor.
Home-grown eggs in isinglass anyone?
I feel my love of gardening just seeped in somehow.
My first plant was a carrot top that my mum placed in a saucer on the windowsill. Still remember it growing fresh green shoots even now and I must have only been 3 or 4 years of age. Good old mum
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When my wife and I brought our last house there wasn’t a lot of colour or form in the garden apart from a row of neglected rose bushes and a bush that was just coming in to flower. When I saw the abundance of flowers from this particular bush I was inquisitive to find out it’s name (at that point there was no gardening bug in my blood) My new neighbour, who’s garden was a beautiful and loved creation, informed me of the name of that particular fushsia. He added that he had given it to the last owners as a cutting he had made and with out any care for it had flourished in to a lovely plant
From that day I was hook and line caught up in what I could create in my new garden. I took cutting of that fuchsia and produced and planted out many.
Now, I love my garden and enjoy propagating plants for my own garden and for friends and family.