Why do we garden?

bédé · March 2023

Some for show, some to keep-up-with-the-Jones's ... Please tell us why you do it.

Gardening for me and many others is an art form. No more a vanity than painting water lilies or haystacks.

Busy-Lizzie · March 2023

I like to see plants grow and beautiful flowers unfurling. Sowing seeds and seeing them germinate is exciting and creative.

Eating vegetables that I've grown is satisfying and feels healthy, knowing that there are no chemicals on them.

I like the feeling of being in the fresh air and doing some physical work, especially something creative. I enjoy the scent of the flowers, especially my roses, newly mown grass and of the earth after the rain.

Looking at the garden that I've created, all the flowers growing in it, gathering the produce makes me feel good and even better when people who visit admire it.

Seeing that wildlife visit and my garden is useful to them and provides a home for them is also satisfying. I enjoy watching the birds on my feeders, the red squirrels harvesting the hazelnuts (France) and the lizards sunbathing on the terrace.

Skandi · March 2023

Hmm that's hard, right now I have a huge vegetable garden and do nothing with the rest of the area, it's just weeds. So now I would say because I like to eat. Last nights meal contained onions, parsnips, potatoes, garlic and tomatoes all grown by me, that is immensely satisfying to serve when there's 30cm of snow out the window.

But when I lived in a 2 up 2 down in the Midlands with a tiny concrete back yard I had neighbours coming over to have a look at my yard, there wasn't anything edible in it but it was full of flowers and narry a weed in sight. I still loved doing it but obviously not for food.

So I grow things because I like to see them grow, given space I lean towards vegetables, in restricted areas I'll grow anything I can and make it look pretty instead, that includes window ledges if that's all I have available.

JennyJ · March 2023

Because it makes me happy.

I don't much care what other people think about my garden, although it's nice when passers-by comment positively (most of my garden is at the front/side of the house so visible from the street). I ignore those who look down their noses because I don't chop everything down to the ground the moment the flowers go over and I don't clip shrubs into blobs and lollipops.

debs64 · March 2023

@Busy-Lizzie exactly! Beautifully expressed. Just to add it’s my happy place and the perfect spot to sit quietly and relax. People do make positive comments but that really is beside the point for me. I garden because I love it.

Hostafan1 · March 2023

vanity

Plantminded · March 2023

Sanity

Hostafan1 · March 2023

coz nobody else is going to do it for me

robairdmacraignil · March 2023

I garden because its enjoyable. Lots of good points made already about the different aspects that are nice. Only the Kale is cropping in my vegetable patch at the moment but that was down to a worse than usual winter here. If everything in gardening was easy then it would not be as interesting. It's constant change in the garden so while I was thinking I was running out of space last year the hard frost just before Christmas looks to have opened up some new planting opportunities by killing off some of the plants that are not as hardy as I had come to think they were.

One point I'd like to add to the long list of reasons to garden is that I like to experiment with different aspects of gardening to learn new things about growing plants and interacting with nature in the garden. It would take too long to list all of the garden experiments that I have tried and are ongoing with very variable levels of success. Most years I try to grow something I have not tried before with a vegetable seed order arrived this week with a number of varieties that are new to me. Also picked some Carob tree seed when on holiday and really looking forward to seeing if I can get some of them to grow.

Happy gardening!

Uff · March 2023

I like to grow things to eat and I like to grow nice things to look at but most of all I like to potter so gardening fulfills part of that need.

didyw · March 2023

Because I'm an optimist.

Why do we garden?

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