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What Is Your Earliest Gardening Memory?

didywdidyw Posts: 3,573
in Plants
I'll start us off - mine is being given a section of the flower bed and some cornflower seeds. I sowed them and they grew up into a tall thicket (nearly as tall as I was). I loved them!  And a sunflower that grew up as high as the bathroom window.
Gardening in East Suffolk on dry sandy soil.
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  • Hostafan1Hostafan1 Posts: 34,889
    mine is walking round to my neighbours house and just gazing at her Livingstone Daises;  Mesembryanthemum criniflorum which was the first botanical name I ever learned at about 10 years old. 
    Devon.
  • Pete.8Pete.8 Posts: 11,340
    Mine was almost exactly the same as yours.
    I was probably about 5yrs and given a small flower bed just by the lounge and I sowed mixed annuals, I was amazed that tiny seeds could produce a beautiful bed of flowering plants in a few months.
    The following year my Dad bought me a 3ft heated propagator for the greenhouse, and I've been an enthusiastic gardener ever since.
    As a child we used to go on long driving holidays in Europe and I'd always take the 3 volumes of the Readers Digest Encyclopaedia of Gardening as holiday reading - I was about 6-7 yrs old :)

    Billericay - Essex

    Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit.
    Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
  • Fran IOMFran IOM Posts: 2,872
    Mine was the same as yours @didyw. My father saved a space in the garden for me and gave me cornflower seeds to sow. They always appeared without fail. As well as a front and back garden he also had an allotment so we were never short of veg or fruit. Thinking back now I don't know how he managed it all working full time with only Sunday off and a half day in the week. Many years ago. 
  • gjautosgjautos Posts: 429
    Using my dad's earthed up potato plot as a bmx track😬. 
  • punkdocpunkdoc Posts: 15,039
    Dead heading my Dad's Pinks, maybe that was why I took so long to get interested.
    How can you lie there and think of England
    When you don't even know who's in the team

    S.Yorkshire/Derbyshire border
  • didywdidyw Posts: 3,573
    Another memory I have is of being on my Dad's allotment with my younger brother. We went on an adventure, walking around the perimeter of the entire plot - which seemed massive to us and Dad so far away, scrambling over brambles and things and a bit anxious that we would never find our way back. 
    Gardening in East Suffolk on dry sandy soil.
  • FairygirlFairygirl Posts: 55,117
    punkdoc said:
    Dead heading my Dad's Pinks, maybe that was why I took so long to get interested.
     :D 
    I spend quite a lot of time doing that. Relentless, but I enjoy it. Must be a masochist.
    My Grandpa always grew them, and carnations , so I think that stayed with me. I loved my Grandpa.  :)

    I honestly can't remember what my earliest memory of gardening is. We were never given a patch of garden to potter in.  :/
    I can remember my  mum and her over wintered pelargoniums in the porch though. Didn't really like them then, still don't  ;)

    It's a place where beautiful isn't enough of a word....



    I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
  • Balgay.HillBalgay.Hill Posts: 1,089
    Never had a garden when i was a bairn, so my earliest memory is 'plundering' other gardens for apples, pears and plums. The constant threat of a beating if you got caught added to the excitement!  :D
    Sunny Dundee
  • punkdocpunkdoc Posts: 15,039
    edited October 2021
    Maybe that was the problem, didn't like my Dad much.
    I bought P. Lord Bute after you mentioned it some years ago and I love it. Now have a few.
    How can you lie there and think of England
    When you don't even know who's in the team

    S.Yorkshire/Derbyshire border
  • TopbirdTopbird Posts: 8,355
    The heady smell of stocks on a hot summer's day while eating a scotch egg and tomato picnic. I was probably about 5 at the time.

    That and growing carrot tops in a saucer or mustard and cress on a bit of old flannel in infant school.
    Heaven is ... sitting in the garden with a G&T and a cat while watching the sun go down
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