
I started gardening, in a way, two score and eight years ago, when at the age of two my mother caught me with my hands in a bag of fertilizer. Family legend has it that she cleaned me up and put me down for a nap, then called the doctor who said to wake me up to make sure I wasn’t turning blue and was still breathing.
Although my mother was a bit reluctant to do so, because you know what they say about sleeping babies, she did it, and I was fine.
I’ve been gardening ever since the fertilizer incident, graduating from digging in the dirt with an old kitchen spoon to having a trug full of digging tools at my disposal, not to mention a large assortment of hoes.
In between the fertilizer incident and now, I have many memories, good memories, of gardening with my Dad, studying horticulture at Purdue University, and eventually gardening in my own gardens.
Growing up, I always helped my Dad in early spring plant peas and onions, then later plant beans and tomatoes and other summer crops. I loved going to greenhouses and garden centers to buy roses or tomatoes, or the red geraniums my Dad always planted in a long box on the front porch.
I loved it when he would give me and my siblings our own little garden plots, probably just a few feet wide, to grow our own flowers in. I’m sure I probably lost interest as the summer wore on, but it was exciting, as I recall, to do my own planting.
And it is still exciting to do my own planting, though I don’t tend to lose interest as much as I did when I was six.
Each gardener has their own story of when they started gardening. For some, it is a childhood story like mine, for others it is a more recent event. But it doesn’t really matter when you personally started gardening; whether five minutes ago or five decades ago. You are a gardener from the very minute you figure out that you love gardening.
So when did you start gardening and become a gardener?
Comments
hangers! I brought dozens of my potted plants in the rental truck when I moved to Nashville. But, it wasn't until we bought our first home that I started a garden. gail
Even once out on my own I have obsessed about gardening and grew one when I could -- even in containers. I only grew vegetables for the longest time since flowers seemed so impractical. Now, with my value placed in stress relief rather than food, my flower garden is 10x bigger than my entire veggie garden!
Great question – I started at age ten. Being of fair skin I would seek the shade of a tree in my garden whilst my younger siblings played in the sun and my parents relaxed in it. One warm sunny day, for some unknown reason, I asked my Dad if I could move his rock garden from one end of the lawn to the other. I sold it as it would give him a bigger area for his car :-) He agreed and left me to it.
I don’t recall having anything to do with plants or stone before this and we had only had a garden for just a couple of years then. Plants and gardens really were an unknown to me. I was now happy to be out with my family and didn’t seem to notice the sun as much. I got such a buzz out of deciding where to position the stones and plants and have never stopped feeling this since!!
Gosh… you had quite a different hands on start ;-)
I too had a mother that gardened. I have been gardening at my present home for four years. For 38 years I had almost all sunny sites. Now I have all shade sites so I am learning to garden again. I have a new blog site so please stop by to smell the roses. stellastarlight.blogspot.com
My dad moved us to Vermont from the NY shore when I was five and it was a more dramatic experience than just losing the ocean and not finding anyone here who knew what pizza was.
My dad started vegetable gardens right away as a means of survival because Vermont was in a depression and times were very tough. My sister and I spent a lot of time with two farm ladies down the road and they taught us vegatables and flowers, maple sugaring and keeping an orchard tidy and boutiful. I remember all too well digging what seemed like tons of potatoes for winter use, loading the wheelbarrow with hubbard, acorn, butternut, buttercup and pink banana squash, and going back through deep snows to bring in brussel sprouts to eat (not a favorite for me back then!)
The farm ladies flower gardens included sweet peas that smelled ever so fragrant as well as zinnias and asters that seemed to appear in all farm gardens back then. All this set the stage for a gardening experience that has brought me to owning a nursery for over twenty years now. I always try to encourage people who visit with kids to get/keep them involved. Years back I did a large institutional garden for a prison setting and a production garden as a summer youth project to keep some kids with not so good ideas out of trouble for a while. Gardening is a proven therapy for everyone and each of us needs to promote it. Right now I am looking for the right person to manage a couple acre vegetable garden which I hope will serve as a demonstration garden for the public while rasing vegetables for our local food shelf. For me, gardening has been a great way to manage the woes of the world and also help others.
George Africa
The Vermont Gardener
http://thevermontgardener.blogspot.com
Vermont Gardens
http://vermontgardens.blogspot.com
Vermont Flower Farm
http://vermontflowerfarm.com
I suppose that's when I started gardening (I also loved growing radishes even though I hated the taste of them and I was enchanted by worms). But I think I became a gardener when I filled the entire patio of our apartment with containers. That's when my husband to be suggested that we better find a place with some land so I could unleash the gardener within.
Every year I consider myself more and more a gardener. Last year I took the Master Gardener's course and learned so much more.
So the gardening stuck. The love for vacuuming, not so much.
Somewhere along the way, I decided that gardening was boring (please, no nasty e-mails!), and it took me many years to get back to it. It's been 7 or 8 years ago that I realized planting perennial beds made much more sense than re-doing annuals in beds every spring. By the time we moved to this house 5 years ago, which really needing some landscaping, I had caught the gardening bug, and now it's a full-fledged obsession.
Never ask an English teacher for a short answer:)
So when you were in my garden and looking for the tomatoes you found 2 lonely ones in the corner. While I love veggies, I just don't have the time or space to grow them , but I do my best to support the local farmers who do.
Great post.
it's really just been this year that i think i feel like a gardener. a newbie one, but a gardener none-the-less..:)
Carol, May Dreams Gardens