Gardening Geek: Travel Edition

Spring is taking her sweet time this year, with the first daffodils finally blooming yesterday. But it is still cold and cloudy and rainy with no warm up in the forecast for the next several days. What better time is there to leave the garden, even for just a few days, to go someplace warmer, where spring is much further along?

Yes, it's time for a little traveling, gardening geek style.

You might be a traveling gardening geek if…

You plan your vacation destinations based on what gardens are nearby. Bonus points if your primary vacation activity IS visiting gardens.

When you arrive in a new city, you look in the yellow pages to see if there are any interesting garden centers nearby. Bonus points if you looked online before you left home to read about those garden centers ahead of time.

As you are driving to your actual destination, you make an unexpected stop to see a garden because you didn’t realize you would be that close to it. Bonus points if it was 100 degrees in the shade on the day you toured the garden.

You pack a few extra plastic bags to put plant cuttings in for the return trip home. Bonus points if you actually brought home new plants.

When you visit a book store out of town, you first go to the gardening section. Bonus points if you bought yourself a new gardening book as a souvenir.

After a few days, your hotel room looks like a well-stocked conservatory with recently purchased plants in the window. Bonus points if some of those same plants could be bought at your neighborhood garden center, but you bought them out of town because they just looked better to you. Double bonus points if you asked for a hotel room with a south facing window because the light would be better for the plants.

You chose to drive instead of fly to your destination so you could bring back more plants. Bonus points if you always keep an extra bag or two and a little spade or trowel in the trunk of your car for digging up a plant, should one be offered to you when you visit a friend’s garden.

You are willing to fly to your destination, even though you hate flying, because the gardening event is too good to miss. Bonus points just for doing this one.

When you get home from your trip, it is another two days before you unpack because you are too busy getting caught up in the garden to bother with something like unpacking. Bonus points if you remembered to at least unpack any plants right away. (Thanks to MSS at Zanthan Gardens for this one, the inspiration for this post.)

When you arrive home from a trip at night, you go straight out to the garden with a flashlight to see what has grown since you left. Bonus points if you worked in the garden with flashlights and spotlights the first night home. Double bonus points if you have a hat with a spotlight built in that you use for night gardening.

When you get home from your trip and look at your pictures, all of them are of gardens. Bonus points if you at least asked your travel companions to be in some of the pictures, mostly so you could add something of known size to the picture so you could later recall the size of the plants around them.

You are NOT a gardening geek if you collected any plants, cuttings from plants, or seeds from the wild or from a public or private garden without permission. If you did that, you forfeit all regular points and do not get any bonus points. Turn your Felco pruners in at the exit on your way out of the garden geekdom.

Are you a traveling gardening geek?