Great question, Denise, and a fun topic to bring back from time to time! A community builder ;-)

Well, plants have always been in the family. My grandfather is a Hoya and Orchid collector,
and my father has been a gardener as long as I've know him :-) His passion for gardening led me into an
appreciation of gardening and nature.

Growing up, however, I didn't have much interest in houseplants.
It wasn't until I saw a massive Jade plant that I really started my collection.
The smooth grey trunk of the Jade was like an elephant leg, and I immediately wanted
to develop just such a plant. So I took three small cuttings, for myself, my mother,
and my brother. And that's basically it! Haven't looked back since.

Josh

I just discovered my love of plants after I bought my daughter a beautiful pink african violet a while ago and killed it (I did everything wrong for it you could possibly think of lol). I rebought two more African violets and I got them to rebloom after researching care for them. This got me excited for house plants, caring for them and researching them I just found it interesting and exciting.

I did alot of my research on here and I'm attracted to the unusual plants, and the most unusual was defiently the succulents. I started buying those cheap little plants at home depot, then I found a local nursery that has a ton of succulents (but they dont seem to carry anything rare which is disapponting, but they have way more of a selection). I still collect other houseplants besides succulents, but they're still my favorite. I'm very attracted to the designs and colors of them, it's hard to beleive that some of them are actually real plants.

As a single mother of two children (10 and 12 years old), I dont get to go out hardly at all, actually it seems like never, but thats okay. But something about caring for my plants is such a....spirtual feeling. It really makes me happy and excited to see that I got a plant to grow and/or bloom. And I feel it's a healthy addiction, it gives me a natural high. Taking care of them never feels like a chore to me...I look forward to caring for them...

And I love coming here to see other people share their love of plants...it reminds me that I'm not the only one and i'm not crazy like my kids tell me LOL. And I've surprised myself at how much I've learned in the past 2-3 months about succulents, and there's still so much more to learn, I love it.

-FlowerPotTipper

As for collecting plants of any kind....I've been addicted to anything that grows be it plant or animal for as long as I can recall. I used to have my 'own garden' at the family home and grew all manner of outdoor UK plants in it, I was so proud of my 1mx1m plot and it seemed huge to me as a small child! Now I'm considerably bigger our 1/2 an acre garden seems just about right, lol! Growing a plant from an insignificant little seed fascinates me just as much as hatching baby caterpillars from eggs and seeing them grow into all manner of moths and butterflies used to do. That's not to say I don't buy plants...I do, and often according to my long suffering husband!

Our first trip abroad as recent as 2000 started my interest in things more tropical including my current passion for Adeniums following a stop off in Thailand in 2005.
Jades are also an interest of mine and I've been growing them for 30 years or so now. My large original one met an untimely end when my husband and his brother tried to move the piano it was placed upon without removing it first. It was completely destroyed, had I had better knowlege of growing jades back then, I realise I could well have rescued bits of it....it took a while for hubby to get into my good books again! However, I soon replaced my treasured plant several fold....revenge is sweet!

I find that looking after plants can be very relaxing and it's something I really enjoy doing. The development of the internet has not only helped me find even more plants to obtain (and 'need'!!), it's a source of valuable information and has introduced me to lots of lovely people from all over the globe. Your advice, encouragement and friendship it appreciated and I value that greatly....thank you!
Gill from the UK.

Hi...growing plants for me started when I was about 10 maybe, it was a longgggggggggg time ago anyway..
my Mom and I stopped at a fruit+vegetable market along the road...and they had green peppers...and I wondered how do they grow, how do they develop that way with their little bumps and shiny coat....and I was in the garden all the time planting new things every year just to see how they grew..
and then a friend got a Hoya Hindu Rope plant and it just amazed me I tryed to figure out how those leaves curled arround the vine like they do....she gave me a start and the plant loved our living room east window, I just loved that plant....and then for my b-day she gave me a english ivy......and ever since I have gotten plants from friends, every kind of store that sells plants and garage sales any discount racks....the most I think I had at one time was about 250, and the least about 6....and now about 50...I have been down sizing as they say....to many to take in and out....I keep all plants giving to me by friends, I still have a hoya rope, and jades and a few cactus and a few others....I hope this didn't get to long.....linda

I've always loved flowers and plants in Michigan. My parents knew nothing about them and killed everything, but I kept trying. I planted a maple tree from seed in my neighbor's yard and it grew. Don't think they were very happy about it, but they were good sports. It got termites eventually and had to be taken out.

I moved from Michigan to California as an adventure the week I got my college diploma, then married a man who knew all about gardening. The house we bought had perhaps 16 big fat jades along one side of the house and one fence. Could not kill them. Ignored them as I was into fuchsias for years until the white fly came along and basically did the fuchsias in. Had to tear out the jades after about 30 years for various reasons but kept a cutting. It's still going well, but confined to a pot.

Then last spring, I started seeing these succulent wreaths around and became enchanted with them. So on a purchasing spree I went willy nilly buying plants to make my friends wreaths for Christmas gifts. I didn't know anything but did that deter me? Ha! They were such cute little things!
Well, the rest is history. I noticed that some little guys were not happy. So I started buying books and searching the internet for help and found my way here. I am at my limit and have no room for more plants. As I give things away, I am more selecting in what I replace it with, and after months of trying, I am finally noticing that some leaves I've tried to propagate are making babies! So thanks everyone for your help! Sort of long. Sorry.
Penny

When I was really little, I loved trees. I think my problems began there. On hot summer days, at the grocery store or shopping center, my mom would search for a parking spot that was next to a tree, and she was always relieved to be able to park in that little bit of shade and not have the car heat up quite as horridly hot. And so eventually I'd quietly say, "Thank you, treeeeee," every time we could park by a small tree, summer or winter. And living semi in the country, I think loving trees and birds is just a given.

I've always liked certain houseplants, but in past years I was always under the impression that the plants I found the most unique could never thrive here, and certainly not in the dark house in which I grew up. So until a few years ago I really didn't have many plants. I moved downtown for school and took with me the few simple ol' plants I had, and living alone, they steadily became more important and more treasured. My first cacti/succulents were little cacti, even though I wasn't and still am not a spiky cacti girl, really. They're still living, I can stay at least! I'm generally attracted to miniatures, so Haworthia hit the button there, in addition to miniature Fuchsias, which I'm just crazy over.

In addition to my genealogy and old-photo/tintype obsession, I really needed to do something else obsessive. And with the economy how it is, and having to quit school and move back home for the time being, with stress and all else, plant-tending is therapy. It brings a distinctive sense of calm. Plants and cats do that for me.

* They're still living, I can say at least! Haha. But surprisingly, I can still stay in this house with all the plants packed in it when the weather's cold. I don't know how I will ever be able to move somewhere else...

Nice stories!

When I was in 7th grade, my family moved from an apartment to a house with a small plot of land. I was inspired by neighbors to grow some veggies - tomatoes, cucumbers, etc. Each year I'd try something different, like cantaloupe or watermelon.

Then one spring I decided to try growing veggies from seed - much cheaper than buying plants. Things went very well.

Another spring, while perusing a Park Seed catalog, I came across "baby toes". Knowing nothing, I tried them from seed. Nothing sprouted. That led me to the library to learn more and figure out what went wrong. That was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back.

On a side note, I kind of miss those days when if you needed information, you actually had to go to a library. It's too easy now, thanks to Google.

x

When I was very small, my dad had a few house plants, and the one that I remember the most was a Hippiastrum. I don't know if he got it as a gift in a box or what, but that scape could really grow in a timescale that a child could appreciate! I thought it was the coolest thing! It seemed as big as I was! We also had flower gardens outside, and my mom had a few African violets as well. After college, I packed my thirty-two plants into my car and left home to go across the country to Colorado to join my college roommate. I had received a "plant light" and that went too. There I had an eclectic group of plants, but it seemed that the ones that I killed were the tropical foliage plants, and the ones that survived were the hoyas and the cacti. Well, the violets survived as well. I still have a clone of one of the hoyas, and that's been thirty years ago. It's my oldest plant. I recieved a zygocactus from a neighbor, and then got married and left for Arizona, where I met a lot of cacti. It was really neat to ditch the plant light and to have my plants outside and also to visit the Desert Botanical Garden. They would have plant sales once in a while, and I bought a few things there. I still have one of those cacti. We then moved all over the country while my S.O. did sabbatical replacement stints. Buffalo NY, Spokane WA, finally went to Flagstaff AZ where the NAU bio dept. had plant sales. Later we went to San Diego, where I met a lot of jades happily growing everywhere. We were like the Clampetts moving here and there with our plants and stuff in the car towed behind the UHaul.

Now in South Dakota I got excited about plants and bought all kinds of things, but I realized that I really don't have good conditions for growing a lot of the plants, so I have given many away, especially large and fast growing ones. I have some small cacti and succulents, and still have a clone of my jade, the hoyas, and a Mamillaria elegans that is a large clump in a fourteen in. pot that I have had since Flagstaff, which makes it twenty one years I have had it. It is getting too heavy to carry in and out, so I am not sure what I am going to do with it. I also have a lot of Zygos and schlums which I like to make crosses of, and a few aloes that I couldn't part with. I don't know if I find plant tending calming, but it surely is interesting and never dull. There is always something to learn, and something new to see and try. Thanks to all who contribute to this forum, because I gain a lot from it.

My fascination started when I was very young, because I spent at least 2 months a year in the Karoo, where I saw lithops and other succulents grow in the wild. I was lucky to have had a farther who loved bonsai. He used to collect seeds from holidays and then sow them, and I had a keen interest to see how veggies grew from seed, so I sowed about anything. Loved eating carrots and peas in the garden. Dad also had lots of aloe and for some reason cacti, once on fell over and on my foot, I could not walk for a week, maybe that is why I never got intrigued with cacti, but once the succulent world opened up for me I was hooked. My wife also learned to love them and as I also love birding a 1 hour walk, quickly becomes a 3 hour walk, because I keep running from on plant to the next, we are calling each other "Come look at this one, no look here see this one, oh what bird was that?!!"

Such a rewarding hobby with little surprises every day, challenges also.