What made you start gardening?

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Alisdair

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What made you start gardening?
« on: December 18, 2011, 08:45:36 AM »
If Alisdair does not think it too far from the purpose of this Forum it would be interesting to know how many members came to be passionate gardeners because of the kind of families they were raised in or whether it was completely by chance or from other influences such as teachers etc,

Well, why not, Carole?
I was started at my English primary school, a boarding school, lucky enough to have a headmaster who was a keen and good gardener. His sweet peas were always magnificent, there was often a big vase of beautiful roses on the stairs up to the chapel (I still have a pressed rose petal dropped from there in my prayer book), and best of all he had laid out a grid of small square garden plots each about two metres across, separated by strips of concrete - any boys interested could form a team of four and in their own time cultivate their plot in the long summer term. The headmaster supplied us with seeds - radishes, spring onions, cornflowers and so forth (I think that's why cornflowers are still my favourite flower). What's more, if we crept through a gap in the hedge on the far side of the playing fields we found ourselves in Hilliers nursery, the school's neighbours at that time on the outskirts of Winchester, where the staff were very kind to us under-age gardeners and used to give us one or two perennials or small shrubs..........
Alisdair Aird
Gardens in SE England (Sussex); also coastal Southern Greece, and (in a very small way) South West France; MGS member (and former president); vice chairman RHS Lily Group, past chairman Cyclamen Society

Umbrian

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Re: What made you start gardening?
« Reply #1 on: December 18, 2011, 09:16:31 AM »
 :) Glad you approved of my idea Alisdair and your account will probably be echoed by many. I really came to gardening through my mother's interest in wild flowers more than gardening. She belonged to the local Naturalist Society and once I was old enough would take me on trips they organised, usually locally because we did not have a car. I used to collect wild flowers and press them (shock, horror nowadays) and had several large scrap books full that have sadly got lost over the years. The seasons of the year brought their own special trips starting in January/February when we went in search of aconites under the hedge on the outskirts of a local village now sadly built upon, later in the year we would visit an area where Bee orchids could be found.........
As I grew older my interest extended into gardening and once hooked that was it.
MGS member living and gardening in Umbria, Italy for past 19 years. Recently moved from my original house and now planning and planting a new small garden.

David Bracey

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Re: What made you start gardening?
« Reply #2 on: December 18, 2011, 11:36:38 AM »
My Dad was a keen gardener, mainly vegetables for the pot.  I remember cabbage white butterflies always present in the garden and the larvae gobbling up anything brassicary.  He would spend hours, or so it seemed, cleaning cauliflowers of the larvae so that they were edible!!  Then there were onions which he always grew on the same "onion patch" which was treated liberally with ash. I knew little about crop rotation in those days but it always occurred to me that was not "best practice".  Any that is how I got into crop protection and gardening via a degree in Horticulture.
MGS member.

 I have gardened in sub-tropical Florida, maritime UK, continental Europe and the Mediterranean basin, France. Of the 4 I have found that the most difficult climate for gardening is the latter.

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John J

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Re: What made you start gardening?
« Reply #3 on: December 18, 2011, 11:41:59 AM »
 I didn't grow up in a particularly garden oriented environment but when, several years ago, I began to research my ancestry I found something on the 1881 Census that I had not known. It seems that my paternal Great grandfather was a Market Gardener with 2.5 acres in the village of Ticknall in Derbyshire near to Calke Abbey. So maybe there's something in the genes.
Cyprus Branch Head. Gardens in a field 40 m above sea level with reasonably fertile clay soil.
"Aphrodite emerged from the sea and came ashore and at her feet all manner of plants sprang forth" John Deacon (13thC AD)

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JTh

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Re: What made you start gardening?
« Reply #4 on: December 18, 2011, 12:42:53 PM »
I grew up in a small town, right next to a large forest, which was our playground, and I used the slope behind our house for my numerous small gardens in my early childhood. Just like Carol’s mother, mine was also interested in wild flowers, and she was a keen gardener. I was very surprised when I as an adult discovered that not all families had books on plants, mushrooms and birds, I thought they were just as obligatory as the phone book. My father did what he was told to do, lifting stones, shoveling soil and performing other menial tasks, just like my husband, I guess that is a common pattern in many families.
My first gardens were not a great success, the soil was very poor and rocky, and for many years later I had a strong dislike for calendulas; I used to get packages of mixed summer flower seeds, there were beautiful pictures of all the wonderful different flowers I was supposed to get on the outside of the packages, all I ever got was calendulas. Fortunately, it did not stop me from being interested in gardening and plants in general, and I am OK with calendulas.
But having a parent who is interested in gardening and plants does not necessarily mean that you will become an ardent gardener, we are four sisters, but I am the only one who has really followed in my mother’s footsteps.
Retired veterinary surgeon by training with a PhD in parasitology,  but worked as a virologist since 1992.
Member of the MGS  since 2004. Gardening in Oslo and to a limited extent in Halkidiki, Greece.

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MikeHardman

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Re: What made you start gardening?
« Reply #5 on: December 18, 2011, 05:11:25 PM »
I can relate to many of the things mentioned in postings so far.

My Mum was a very keen gardener and flower arranger (did the latter semi-professionally). She got the interest from her parents, who were market gardeners in Surrey, and Grandad was a nurseryman and contract gardener. When I was growing up, those grandparents of mine lived only a mile or so from Mum & Dad (in Leatherhead, Surrey), so I was under quite a strong gardening influence. I had a small plot in the garden where I grew this and that. We lived on the edge of the countryside, so the woods were where I played a lot. In the woods, there were piles of flints that had been tractor-raked from the intervening fields, and amongst those stones were some fossil sea urchins. With a bit of encouragement from my elder sister's hubby, who was a geologist, I got the rock hound bug. That led to me reading geology at university.

At university, my PhD supervisor was a keen photographer (ran his own photo agency), and he got me into photography. It was necessary for my geological studies, but it was also interesting in its own right. And the search for subjects kept my eyes open whenever outside, so it was not long before I was photographing wild and garden flowers. Dad was a draughtsman and an engineer, initially mechanical- and later plastics- (he was involved with the introduction of Formica to Britain). He was also a very keen DIYer, especially when it came to plastic laminates (he advised Barry Bucknall, who made the early DIY programmes on BBC TV). So he would do the design and building work around the garden and house - which I got involved with. So - a lot of angles coming together to shape my interests.

More recently, in 1991, my elder sister and I decided it would be nice to pool our interests/talents and create something to dedicate to our Mother, as a thankyou for her fostering our interests in natural history and gardening. After a while, we settled on a the idea of a book on the genus Viola (perhaps a world-scope monograph with a focus spread over botany, gardening, photography and illustration; there was a vacant niche). I'm still working on that. But meanwhile, the research on Viola has led me into many avenues and friendships worldwide. The violet book idea was particularly appropriate because Mum's name was Violet.

Mum & Dad.
Mike
Geologist by Uni training, IT consultant, Referee for Viola for Botanical Society of the British Isles, commissioned author and photographer on Viola for RHS (Enc. of Perennials, The Garden, The Plantsman).
I garden near Polis, Cyprus, 100m alt., on marl, but have gardened mainly in S.England

Umbrian

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Re: What made you start gardening?
« Reply #6 on: December 19, 2011, 08:42:57 AM »
Fascinating reading, let's have some more please. I particularly liked John J, because one never knows what will be revealed when attempting to do some family history. How about you, the other Hero member John? A good Christmasy, light but interesting subject.  :)
MGS member living and gardening in Umbria, Italy for past 19 years. Recently moved from my original house and now planning and planting a new small garden.

pamela

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Re: What made you start gardening?
« Reply #7 on: December 21, 2011, 08:54:09 PM »
It was probably my Grandfather who was born in the Vale of Evesham and who served in the terrible battle of  the Somme (MC).  After, being somewhat depressed went to New Zealand with my Grandmother and my Mother aged 2 to buy land in the Manawatu to become a Market Gardener
He had a profound effect on my life. He never spoke about the War but was a wonderful gardener and his vegetable gardens and orchards with old-fashioned varieties of English apples, pears, plums, walnuts, were set in a magnificent property developed from 1924.
So many trees (native and deciduous), flowers and which became hidey places for my sister and me to play and scrump. In the month of May we sat for hours demolishing passion fruits under the vines. At Christmas (summer) we ate the delicious peas and beans that he grew and always there were always raspberries, strawberries, figs, peaches and apricots
We all would sit at a large wooden table on the lawn under a huge Weeping Willow and Granny would make supper on hot summer evenings. The enormous red camellias of over 30 ft high hovered around the perimeter and the smell of the scrubby Manuka in the beds is etched in my memory.
We lived in London for 30 years with a pocket-handkerchief of a garden albeit at the back of a wood but it’s only since I have been in Spain that I have been able to let legacy from my Grandfather come to the fore… We have planted two Schinus molle in his memory. At the gate of the drive to my Grandparents house were two beautiful Pepper trees complete with stick insects Phasmatodea.   

Jávea, Costa Blanca, Spain
Min temp 5c max temp 38c  Rainfall 550 mm 

"Who passes by sees the leaves;
 Who asks, sees the roots."
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Alisdair

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Re: What made you start gardening?
« Reply #8 on: December 22, 2011, 08:25:16 AM »
Lovely images, Pamela; thanks!
Alisdair Aird
Gardens in SE England (Sussex); also coastal Southern Greece, and (in a very small way) South West France; MGS member (and former president); vice chairman RHS Lily Group, past chairman Cyclamen Society

Umbrian

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Re: What made you start gardening?
« Reply #9 on: December 22, 2011, 08:34:43 AM »
Lovely account of the influences that made you into the passionate gardener you are today Pamela. It would appear from the postings already received on this subject that most of us were indeed born into families where gardening in one form or another and a love of the natural world were a large part of everyday life. Weren't we lucky! :)
MGS member living and gardening in Umbria, Italy for past 19 years. Recently moved from my original house and now planning and planting a new small garden.

Daisy

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Re: What made you start gardening?
« Reply #10 on: December 22, 2011, 02:26:16 PM »
When I was 15, I left home, and went to live in London during the "swinging sixties"
I ended up in a bedsit, without even a window box.
 I didn't realise, that I missed the family garden, until one morning outside Tottenham Court Road tube station. On the newsagent's stand there was a copy of Amateur Gardening, with a photograph on the front cover of the most beautiful garden I had ever seen.
I bought it straight away.
After that, I would buy every gardening magazine I could find. I used to read them from cover to cover, whilst eating my dinner in the local Golden Egg or Wimpy Bar, before going back to my bedsit.
The only garden that I knew of, was Kew Gardens, so I used to pay my threepenny bit and spend hours there every Sunday.
Then someone gave me The Manual of Shrub Roses by Graham Thomas. It was just a little booklet from Sunningdale Nurseries where he worked.
Graham Thomas had such a way of describing the roses, that even though I had never seen them, I knew them intimately. I could smell their perfume and feel the silkiness of their petals.
I have that booklet still.

It was some years before I had my own garden and it was tiny. But it backed on to the main London to Brighton railway line and the embankment was very wide at that point, so, I commandeered it.
That railway embankment became my own little paradise. I would be out there all day until it was too dark to see.
I would go and visit gardens and I used to haunt Will Ingwerson's alpine nursery.

Many years later, I moved to Cornwall and at last had a large garden. It was beautiful. I still have pangs when I think of it. But the damp climate of Cornwall was making my asthma a lot worse and I realised that I spent more time, sitting inside, looking out of the window waiting for the rain to stop, than I did being out in the garden!

So I moved to Crete and now have a tiny garden again. But I am older now, and cannot spend all day working in it any more. But I can sit in it and plan it and I am finding it so exciting to learn a new way of gardening. ;D ;D ;D
Daisy
Amateur gardener, who has gardened in Surrey and Cornwall, England, but now has a tiny garden facing north west, near the coast in north east Crete. It is 300 meters above sea level. On a steep learning curve!!! Member of both MGS and RHS

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Alisdair

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Re: What made you start gardening?
« Reply #11 on: December 22, 2011, 06:02:33 PM »
Daisy, So interesting, thanks so much for taking us on that exciting journey through a gardening life!
Alisdair Aird
Gardens in SE England (Sussex); also coastal Southern Greece, and (in a very small way) South West France; MGS member (and former president); vice chairman RHS Lily Group, past chairman Cyclamen Society

Umbrian

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Re: What made you start gardening?
« Reply #12 on: December 24, 2011, 07:44:50 AM »
Fascinating account of how you came to gardening Daisy - how I agree with you about no longer being able to spend the whole day working in the garden as one gets older and having to to take pleasure from more sitting and planning. My husband used to travel a lot on business when we lived in the UK and I would fill my days from 9am to 9pm out in the garden. Alas now, in retirement, I find I can no longer do this but the long hot summers here in Italy make lounging in the garden both a necessity and an enjoyment and there are so many different things that I can grow and experiment with as I am sure you have discovered.
MGS member living and gardening in Umbria, Italy for past 19 years. Recently moved from my original house and now planning and planting a new small garden.

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John

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Re: What made you start gardening?
« Reply #13 on: January 02, 2012, 11:20:06 PM »
I grew up in an industrial town to the east of Manchester where the houses were terraced and the skyline was of factories and chimneys. There were no gardens or trees at least not close to home. There was the Victorian park that was really the only bit of horticulture in the area. It was quite a gloomy place with lots of spotted Aucuba and trees such as black poplar. These were planted as they could cope with the industrial pollution. What little bit of Victorian style bedding was still around when I was a child soon disappeared due to cut backs.
That’s the gloomy bit.
I suppose I was fortunate because directly opposite our terrace on the other side of the road was the canal which was at the bottom of an embankment. This was of rough, weedy grass that was never maintained and the edge of the canal had a range of water plants and of course wild life.
To the rear of our houses was what we called a back. Many terraces were back to back with a cobbled alley way (as in Coronation Street) but ours was wider with a small bit of rough ground bordering a shunting yard where thousands of railway trucks were held and often moved at night.
My first interest was probably in animals, birds and insects but quickly included plants. I started to plant the odd thing in the bit of rough ground by the railway yard and among the first plants was a seedling of Salix caprea (the Goat Willow), by chance it turned out to be a male and was a lovely sight in spring. I think that I then gradually cleared the patch with an old axe and went on to create a small garden. It was probably only a few square meters but anyhow that is where I started.
My mother had an interest particularly in birds that may have come from her father who apparently bred Linnets but she also liked flowers. My father had no interest at all other than football!
I think that’s more than enough Carole but as you asked I thought I should put fingers to key board.
« Last Edit: January 03, 2012, 11:02:59 AM by John »
John
Horticulturist, photographer, author, garden designer and plant breeder; MGS member and RHS committee member. I garden at home in SW London and also at work in South London.

Umbrian

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Re: What made you start gardening?
« Reply #14 on: January 03, 2012, 08:34:27 AM »
 :)Thanks John for finding the time to fill us in on how you got hooked on gardening. I think it is interesting to note that gardening does seem to be a lasting passion. There were certainly times in my life, when raising a young family with few resources, when my love for gardening had to take a back seat but my interest in growing things was always there and I was fortunate enough to be able to indulge my passion in later years. The move to Italy, in retirement ,opened up a whole new world as did membership of the MGS. One of the best things is the number of friends I have made through gardening. In my experience people with a love for gardening are usually the nicest of people to know always willing to share both knowledge and plants.
MGS member living and gardening in Umbria, Italy for past 19 years. Recently moved from my original house and now planning and planting a new small garden.