Lord Bute was the one that tempted me @punkdoc - the colour is right up my street I was too slow to bring it inside and the frosts got it. I'll get it again though.
It's a place where beautiful isn't enough of a word....
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
My grandparents were gardeners, so we used to spend weekends with them picking toms in the greenhouse, or raspberries at the allotment. It's funny the things that stick and those that don't; I've always loved growing fruit and veg and had an allotment in my 20s, but I still hate the fuschias that granny had everywhere!
We had a garden at home but my parents weren't into gardening then. I mostly remember playing with the fairies at the end of the garden and making 'perfume' (sludge) in an old ice cream tub by mixing rosemary leaves and water from the outside tap. We did have a plum tree that gave lots of sticky fruit, and an apple tree that keeled over in the great storm, full of apples, and spent the rest of our time in that house propped up by a garden fork only ever producing single fruits.
Oh - perfume making! I'd forgotten that @CharlotteF! Petals mixed with water and wondering why it didn't smell nice! And I developed an aversion to hydrangeas too, because of the dusty old lump of a thing that sat outside my Grandma's window - although I loved my Grandma very much!
I lived in tropical Sri Lanka until I was 18 when I left for America.
Both grandparents had massive farm estates of rubber, rice, cinnamon, various vegetables and livestock and employed many in the village. The livestock was for family use for eggs and milk, roaming free around the estate. None of them were ever killed. Our house was a short walk from the estate. There was a grill or holes above all windows for good ventilation, and polished cement floors to keep the house cool. My mother had grown jasmines all around the house, running along a long fence built for support. Jasmine scent flooded the house all the time.
My mother would nip one side of a stem of Jasmine, put a "bandage" filled with sandy soil around it, and it would sprout kind of roots. And then she would take a cutting and plant it in a pot. There was a row of Jasmine Officinale cuttings and red Anthurium planted in pots near the shed. My father had brought a jute sack full of manure from the farm. My nanny dug holes in the garden for them and I was given the job of planting them.
Sounds idyllic @Jac19 - you must miss it. My father was stationed in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon of course) during the war. They had a pet monkey he told me. Or a wild one they adopted.
My earliest garden memory is "helping" my grandad plant a border of alternating blue lobelia and white alyssum around the edges of the flowerbed in their tiny front garden, around the "dinnerplate dahlias" in the middle - only a few plants, and the tubers were dug up and stored in the cellar over winter. It looked the same every year.
Doncaster, South Yorkshire. Soil type: sandy, well-drained
@Jac19 ... A former colleague was from Sri Lanka ... she had been orphaned by the trouble there and was adopted and came to live in the UK. When she grew up she became a Children's Social Worker which is when we worked together ... eventually she went back to Sri Lanka to work with orphans there.
My earliest gardening memory is of when I was about 3 and I first went to kindergarten ... I usually only went in the mornings, but one day my father was late collecting me (trouble with a cow I expect) and that afternoon we went into the kindergarten and planted crocus bulbs. I loved it.
Another day, at about the same age, we were visiting my Granny ... she had a lovely Polish ex airman who lived nearby and helped her in the garden. I couldn't say his name so he said I should call him Mister Mattil. I liked him because he wore a black beret and he would answer my questions very patiently. One day he told me to be careful because the plants he was tieing up had sharp prickles. I asked him why he grew them if they had horrid sharp prickles that hurt you? He said that one day he would show me why and I would understand. A few visits later he called to me when we arrived and took me down the garden and picked a raspberry for me .... then I understood and I wanted to be like Mister Mattil and make horrid prickly things give me wonderful things like raspberries.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Sunday mornings being sent to pick runner beans and mint tips (for mint sauce) for Sunday lunch. Mum liked mint sauce with runner beans irrespective of the meat that went with them By the time I was about 6 or 7, I was making the mint sauce. There's a particular mint - the smell will take me back home faster than anything else
Gardening on the edge of Exmoor, in Devon
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
My grandparents had a huge garden,my uncle still lives there. When I stayed there as a child,there was forest at the back,full of Wallabies and deer. Late parents had a pretty big garden. Lots of chicken when I was little. A pure white cat,that wasn't deaf,very unusual. Gooseberry patch,ate them off the bushes,fed the chicken. I always had rabbits. First experience of gardening when I was 8 a patch marked out to weed,I hated it. My late father thought flowers were a waste of time and money. The front garden was big,lots of London Pride, nasturtiums which were full of pretty,stripey fur caterpillars that I considered my friends and played with
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I was too slow to bring it inside and the frosts got it. I'll get it again though.
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
We had a garden at home but my parents weren't into gardening then. I mostly remember playing with the fairies at the end of the garden and making 'perfume' (sludge) in an old ice cream tub by mixing rosemary leaves and water from the outside tap. We did have a plum tree that gave lots of sticky fruit, and an apple tree that keeled over in the great storm, full of apples, and spent the rest of our time in that house propped up by a garden fork only ever producing single fruits.
Both grandparents had massive farm estates of rubber, rice, cinnamon, various vegetables and livestock and employed many in the village. The livestock was for family use for eggs and milk, roaming free around the estate. None of them were ever killed. Our house was a short walk from the estate. There was a grill or holes above all windows for good ventilation, and polished cement floors to keep the house cool. My mother had grown jasmines all around the house, running along a long fence built for support. Jasmine scent flooded the house all the time.
My mother would nip one side of a stem of Jasmine, put a "bandage" filled with sandy soil around it, and it would sprout kind of roots. And then she would take a cutting and plant it in a pot. There was a row of Jasmine Officinale cuttings and red Anthurium planted in pots near the shed. My father had brought a jute sack full of manure from the farm. My nanny dug holes in the garden for them and I was given the job of planting them.
My earliest gardening memory is of when I was about 3 and I first went to kindergarten ... I usually only went in the mornings, but one day my father was late collecting me (trouble with a cow I expect) and that afternoon we went into the kindergarten and planted crocus bulbs. I loved it.
Another day, at about the same age, we were visiting my Granny ... she had a lovely Polish ex airman who lived nearby and helped her in the garden. I couldn't say his name so he said I should call him Mister Mattil. I liked him because he wore a black beret and he would answer my questions very patiently. One day he told me to be careful because the plants he was tieing up had sharp prickles. I asked him why he grew them if they had horrid sharp prickles that hurt you? He said that one day he would show me why and I would understand. A few visits later he called to me when we arrived and took me down the garden and picked a raspberry for me .... then I understood
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”