Happy Marion, I always enjoy reading your contributions. My Faither is partially sighted and they moved to a house just along the road from us last year. Means I have two gardens to work in, which is brilliant, but the main thing for choosing plants for their garden is the scent so that he can enjoy it too. They have a patio next to the house which is the only wheelchair friendly part of the garden, so the planting farthest away also has the brightest/strongest colours we can find. I love the research into which plants would suit, almost as much as the gardening itself. Learning something new all the time ... can't beat it!
I started gardening when I was knee high to a grasshopper, I spent hours with my father in the garden working in the flower boarders but particularly in the vegetable and fruit plots. I was really proud of my very own little plot. I have so many happy memories. I remember my father picking up a snail one morning and chucking over into the neighbour's garden, then he turned round and gave me a really cheeky smile! At the end of the gardening day we would both go into the shed where my father brewed his own wines and we would have a little sample!
Now that I am all grown up I have my own garden to tend and I enjoy every second I spend in it.
Too hot to do any strenuous gardening in Bristol this morning but I have pottered about tying up my clematis and sweet peas and my one and only sunflower which is now 1.60 metres tall and outgrowing its bamboo stake so it will be tied to the drainpipe next time! How is everyone getting on with their freebie seeds from GW?
Hi everyone... this is my first post here, so hello!
I don't think I was particularly keen on gardening as a youngster... I was more interested in playing in the garden than taking any notice of what was planted there! I do remember eating quite a lot flowers... my Mum was pleased, I think, that it was mostly the daisies in the lawn!
As a teenager I had a spider plant which went through about 10 generations of potting on the plantlets before I finally gave it away to someone! But I was also given my first cactus...
Over the years at uni and a couple after that I lived in flats so there wasn't much opportunity... although my windowsill cactus collection was growing and still is now (much to my boyfriend's dismay)!
Finally, a year and a half ago, I moved in to a house with a garden (a rather overgrown one). A March weekend last year, which involved a lot of hard work, saw the removal of most of the unwanted plantlife and the digging of new veggie beds and since then I haven't looked back! I really didn't know that I would enjoy it so much... now, although I try not to, I always end up in the garden rather than doing chores inside. And a lot of time is spent daydreaming of a new, far bigger, garden of the future!
Wow, what a fascinating collection of stories. Thank you everyone for contributing, I have enjoyed reading all of them (with two notable exceptions - tsk).
Kat - thanks for sharing your experiences, I hope your garden continues to help heal your grief. I love that quote from Rudyard Kipling - what a fantastic rule to live by.
I have a sneaking suspicion Anne Wareham and I would get along famously as I garden with shameless shortcuts and have been known to add mulch rather than bother to weed for an instant fix. However, Anne is a professional and successful gardener whereas I am trained but choose to ignore received wisdom! I recently sat in on a gardener's question time recording and joined everyone in gasps of horror as one lady confessed to sticking newly delivered bare root roses in water until they rotted. On returning home I remembered to my shame that there was a mouldering plastic bag of same roses behind the potting bench, and had sat there for FOUR months! Incredibly they survived and are now in full growth despite only being heeled in as I was short of time. Oh dear... On a happier note, my interest in plants came after me and my fellow nurses used to decorate our bicycle baskets to celebrate chelsea week and cycled between hospital buildings trailing petals behind us! This progressed to decorating our children's ward with elaborate arrangements which of course was against hospital rules. The ward clerk used to phone to tip us off that matron was on her way over and we would stash our 'garden'in the linen cupboards! I am passionate about plants and somehow my shoddy ways have produced what is in my eyes, a garden which I adore and is very pretty.
i am lucky to live in Hertfordshire with the countryside just minutes from my doorstep, and would disappear down the lanes with siblings and friends to pick blackberry's as a child, showering mum with fruit even though we already had fruit bushes and trees in the garden, we even filled the bath up with scrumped apples and she went potty!we had a large garden and my brother would grow veg, and we would wrap apples and pears in paper to store in the pantry for lovely pies and crumbles, we kept a few chickens back then and the first thing i did in my new large garden was get 4 chickens! we have an allotment nearby for the last6 years and i wouldn't know what to do with myself if i couldn't get outside and put my hands in the soil!
Hubby and I inherited a pond when we moved in our house. It was dirty, murky and unsightly. We took the task of tidying up and clean the pond. We enjoyed doing that project together that we ended up doing the whole garden. We are both novices as far as gardening is concerned but we took great joy when the we viewed the first blooming of our flowers or a few cherry tomatoes popping out of the plant. It's fun having to do it myself more so sharing the whole experience with my husband.
my grampas ancesters were gardener /labourers in cheshire till the industrial revelotion. and carried on gardening .when not working.and thats why i am too .xxx thanks grampa
What a lovely blog Kate! And yes, I got the bug young. I gardened with my grandad, had my own plot and a small pond in my parents' garden and had a job at a plant nursery as a teenager. And like you, I grew countless plants in my room at university.
Gardening's more important than ever to me now, and I steal every possible moment I can to be outside with my plants (I've just had to drag myself inside to get on with some work, which is a pain).
I'm encouraging my daughter, Ida, to be outside as much as possible, so it'll be interesting to see if she follows in my footsteps. Or maybe she'll be like her mum who hates most things about gardens apart from sunbathing in them - we'll see...
Posts
Now that I am all grown up I have my own garden to tend and I enjoy every second I spend in it.
I don't think I was particularly keen on gardening as a youngster... I was more interested in playing in the garden than taking any notice of what was planted there! I do remember eating quite a lot flowers... my Mum was pleased, I think, that it was mostly the daisies in the lawn!
As a teenager I had a spider plant which went through about 10 generations of potting on the plantlets before I finally gave it away to someone! But I was also given my first cactus...
Over the years at uni and a couple after that I lived in flats so there wasn't much opportunity... although my windowsill cactus collection was growing and still is now (much to my boyfriend's dismay)!
Finally, a year and a half ago, I moved in to a house with a garden (a rather overgrown one). A March weekend last year, which involved a lot of hard work, saw the removal of most of the unwanted plantlife and the digging of new veggie beds and since then I haven't looked back! I really didn't know that I would enjoy it so much... now, although I try not to, I always end up in the garden rather than doing chores inside. And a lot of time is spent daydreaming of a new, far bigger, garden of the future!
Kat - thanks for sharing your experiences, I hope your garden continues to help heal your grief. I love that quote from Rudyard Kipling - what a fantastic rule to live by.
Kate
Oh dear...
On a happier note, my interest in plants came after me and my fellow nurses used to decorate our bicycle baskets to celebrate chelsea week and cycled between hospital buildings trailing petals behind us! This progressed to decorating our children's ward with elaborate arrangements which of course was against hospital rules. The ward clerk used to phone to tip us off that matron was on her way over and we would stash our 'garden'in the linen cupboards!
I am passionate about plants and somehow my shoddy ways have produced what is in my eyes, a garden which I adore and is very pretty.
Gardening's more important than ever to me now, and I steal every possible moment I can to be outside with my plants (I've just had to drag myself inside to get on with some work, which is a pain).
I'm encouraging my daughter, Ida, to be outside as much as possible, so it'll be interesting to see if she follows in my footsteps. Or maybe she'll be like her mum who hates most things about gardens apart from sunbathing in them - we'll see...