How many years now has it been since you fell in LOOOOVE with gardening ;-) ??

Question

Good Lord, I just cannot stop thinking about it.
I have planted the biggest garden ever this year and am ALWAYS adding onto it, planting more stuff.
It just makes me so very happy, like all the work that goes with it too
how about you??
How many years now have you had a PASSION for gardening?? :-D

Answer 1

As far back as I can remember, I remember gardens. It is like they were in me from the start. Early memories... my mother's peonies, bursts of pink at eye level every spring, and such luscious scent. The strip of raspberry bushes at the back of our yard ripening into honeyed treats. The neighbor's pansies dancing and laughing in a breeze. Sitting with her and talking quietly while she cared for her garden rose beds. Running my fingers over the long flat mahogany-colored pods of the honey locust in her yard to feel their smooth surface, the bumps of seeds within.

In third grade we move north to New England. I grow my first flower, a marigold in a dixie cup for Mother's Day. I am hooked by seeds. I collect the marigold's seeds and next spring I plant a lot of dixie cups. That summer, marigolds edge our yard, growing lushly around the huge rocks that keep people from parking on the lawn. Gold and orange dancing around each rough grey form. I collect more seeds. In the fall, just before frost, I take cuttings from the graveyard plantings, and fill a small unfinished room with rooting begonias and coleus. Next summer I plant all the way around the house's foundation, then clear a patch for vegetables... a spot too shady, really. But there are a few cucumbers and tomatoes, struggling in the half-sun and poor soil.The year after that our neighbor, having watched my efforts, invites me to plant my own rows in his large fertile vegetable garden. I grow okra, tomatoes, beans, and more. I learn about yellow and black garden spiders from a close encounter, looking up to find her sitting in her web about a foot from my nose. And then I enter high school and, for a few years, studies of various sorts divert me.

But not for long. This was the beginning of a lifetime passion... the threads weaving from my parents' new house in Virginia to my new boyfriend's house there, to my first apartment in a fourplex house with a yard, to my first house, through to my third house where I live now. Each with gardens, each different. Each still growing in my memories. I've gotten better, but each seed is still partly that first marigold. Each flower still has a taste of those pansies and roses and peonies. When I kneel beside a garden and rake through soil with a claw-tool... it is not just that garden but every one I have worked, picture by picture, the planet's health and my own intertwined in the dirt under my nails.

Answer 2

I'm a 36 year old rookie. My wife and I bought our first house a year and a half ago. We call it our little slice of heaven. We've lived in apartments for years before we got married and now we have a beautiful little acre of wooded land that we can finally call our own. Anyway . . . when we moved in, there was a small fenced in dirt patch the previous owners used as a garden. Well . . . neither one of us ever had a garden . . . but we both liked the idea of it. So we planted our first garden in the "fenced in dirt patch" last year. Even though we didn't really know what we were doing . . . God blessed us with a wonderfully productive garden. We had a blast !!! During the winter I decided to kick it up a notch (as Emeril would say), did some research, and ended up building an awesome 24' x 16' raised garden over Memorial Day weekend. Not only was it my first DIY project . . . but I had a chance to bond with my dad and we couldn't be happier with it. We're just starting to harvest our crops now. We have Zucchini, squash, string beans, thai peppers, 5 different types of tomatoes, bell peppers, jalepenos, cucumbers, beautiful egg plants, delphiniums and hollyhocks for asthetics. Well . . . God blessed us again . . . our tomato plants are almost 7' tall !!! Our garden is now the talk of the neighborhood even amongst the most seasoned gardeners !!! We both just fell in love with our garden and hope to enjoy is as long as we can. We also hope to teach our children to enjoy gardening. I plan to build a mini raised garden for the kids to enjoy !!! Happy gardening from it's newest fan !!!

Answer 3

My passion is with vegetable gardening.......25 years now. I started with a small garden in the city and since we moved to the country it's about a half acre. I like experimenting with new varieties. I love having all that homegrown stuff in the freezer and on the shelves to eat all winter. I always grow more than we can use so I give alot of it away to friends and family and the local food shelf. I have perennial veggies and a couple of apple trees and plant flowers to attract bees and others to repel the harmful insects. It takes alot of time and work, but I love it. It's a peaceful place to be. I have a year old rat terrier that gardens with me....she even helps me pull the onions. lol I do have flower gardens, but they're not as big.

Answer 4

It's been about 20 years and it started with a sickly rose bush. I knew nothing about roses or gardening at the time, but I did hear someone once say that if you cut a rose bush down to two foot it would grow back bigger and healthier. It was my grandfathers rose bush and he had passed about 10 years earlier and the rose was never cared for since his passing. So one day I decided to take a pair of hedge trimmers to it and I just started chopping. I thought for sure I had killed it, but next spring it put on such a show that I had never seen. It was from that moment on that I became a rose person which eventually lead to perennial gardens and then finally vegetable gardening. I dream of owning acreage some day because I'm beginning to run out of room. I love growing and harvesting things because it's almost magical. I'm not a religious person, but I consider my garden my church because that is where I feel closest to God. Sounds corny, but it's true.

Answer 5

For me it was 8 years ago when my hubby and I was renting a small house. I got crazy and hated leaving the house when it was time to move. Now I have my own house and have gone completely crazy with the garden. The only reason I am on Y/A instead of outside is because it is too hot to do anything in the garden right now. I have dreams about flowers.

Answer 6

It's been about 20 years now. I love trying new things with vegetables from the garden. This year we have dried all of our tomatoes and peppers. Its really nice seeing harvested crops sitting on the shelves waiting to be used this winter. I have to dig some new beds before getting any more ornamental plants. I've filled the old beds up past holding any more.

Answer 7

Plants and gardening took possession of my life very quietly. I'd come back from work and just stop to pull a weed that caught my eye. Then I'd find myself propped up in the evening with a catalog or two. Finally a friend bought me a gift membership to the society and I went to a meeting. I'd heard about people with addictions standing up to admit their problems. Well here I was amongst people acclaiming their passion. So I admitted I was hooked. I am a rose grower.
I don't remember showing any interest in my mother's garden. It was a chore like any other. One I could do as I walked by, grab a weed, and say "yes, Mom, I did some gardening today". I used to help her while she fuffled about her roses, you know dusting and mulching and clipping. Being there year after year I began at last to take an interest in what was going on around me. I observed the unfolding minutiae of the humdrum garden vegetation, I was surprised by each floral event. I came to realize what she did had an order, a languid procession that took an entire year to come about. What I once saw as abrupt or disruptive was timed and poised. Apple trees now stunned me with their blossoms, rhododendrons delighted me with their indumentum, but the lasting image is of the roses. Walking under the apple to the old yellow rose trellised on the south side of the fenced kitchen garden. This rose grew in huge bristling arcs above me, each arc graced with pale yellow blossoms back lit by the setting sun. What was once just a nasty lot of prickles was a mass of blossoms with ruffled, cupped petals of silk clasping a little bouquet of stamens.
Then I left home and forgot all about gardening. But I guess if one is English there is a time one will garden. It is a proclivity that will find expression. Like cancer I have a two hit theory of gardening, part genetic, part environment. Roses were a part of my first horticultural awakening. It is working directly with plants that gives me a time to reflect, and it is my roses with their complex scents that ambush me every time I walk into their influence. I now spend a great deal of time sitting in my garden marveling at my hortus conclusus. My place of hidden tranquility shut off from the bustle of the rest. In every aspect is a rose. Some so small they are best appreciated seated while others sprawl and many twine up trees. I am a rose grower. Thanks Mom.

Abbot Strabbo in his bestselling poem Hortulus tells it best.

Though a life of retreat offers various joys,
None, I think, will compare with the time one employs
In the study of herbs, or in striving to gain
Some practical knowledge of nature's domain
Get a garden! What kind you may get matters not.....

The advice given here is no copy-book rule,
Picked up second-hand, read in books, learned at school,
But the fruit of hard labour and personal test
To which I have sacrificed pleasure and rest.

Answer 8

We started our landscaping business 4 years ago, mainly because of my love of gardening. I remember as a child, my parents encourage my sisters and me to create our own gardens and take care of them. We were so proud when our plants grew!
My flower beds are full.... I like potting different plants and changing out the colors with different seasons. In Spring, I like pastels. In winter, I go with red mainly.... Summer, red, white & blue! Fall...orange & yellow... My son gave me that idea.... =)

Answer 9

I love it since 2oo4, when I came here, USA. In my country, people who live in the city take no interest in gardening. I love to plant vegetables and fruits. sunflower is the only flower I love to plant. I also interest in pets like goldfish, guinea pig, and birds. Garden and pets make me happy! I cannot stop thinking about them.

Answer 10

yeah...i agree wif u...it's vry happy esp when d flowers bloosom beautifully...it's vry rewarding seeing that n it's worth it even though we hv 2 spend a lot of time n money to take good care of them...i've been gardening for four years...too bad my house dun hv vry large space for me to plant...