CMK - what a wonderful thread!

For me, this hobby took a long time to take hold. When I purchased my first home, I planted azaleas, and constructed a brick patio. That was all. Moved several times and just worried about mowing the grass. Everything else I ever tried just died, so I didn't try much.

Then, in 2001 we built a house and it had brick landscaping areas that I figured I needed to fill in! lol

After many mistakes, I now love gardening and, though I love plants, I consider myself more of a designer-type gardener because I have realized that without a plan, it's just a mess (to me). Fortunately, we live on acreage, so I can extend my gardening out farther than just around the house. :) I have big plans for many years to come.

I know no other gardeners (the rest of my family doesn't understand this hobby), so I am self-taught through books and this website!

Have yet to get into vegetable gardening, but we always say 'next year'. I'm sure one year we will actually do it!

haha - it sounds like I'm a city girl, but I actually grew up in the country and have always lived in the country. But, my mother never cared for flowers, so it's just something I was never around (like a mystery).

Am looking forward to hearing about everyone else!

My garden roots go back to early childhood (50 years or so ago!) We (mother, disabled-soon-to-be-deceased father, sister and I) lived with my maternal grandparents on their farm. Or, more accurately, former farm since my grandfather was 80 when I was born. So he had ceased active farming by then and the land was grandually returning to bush. But, for a child - and looking back with adult eyes - it was a wonderful natural garden - meadows overtaken with wildflowers and escaped garden flowers, wild strawberries and blueberreies; wild raspberries and blackberries in logged-over clearings in the woods; waterlilies in the lake; trilliums and lady's slippers in the woods; an overgrown but still productive orchard with all sorts of interesting old apple varieties; a 1/2 acre or so of vegetble garden; a perennial garden that my great grandmother started, around the house. My sister and I both started working in the vegetable garden as soon as my grandfather figured we were old enough to tell the difference between a weed and a plant - about age 2...! Both my sister and I are avid gardeners now.

When DH and I got our first house, my interest was largely in growing plants - lots of them - and the veggie garden. When we moved here in 1999, I had decided it was time to get a bit more organized about things. The first step was to refine the color by using a more limited color range. In the past few years my main focus has been on the layout of the garden, making it more formal in layout. It's been a long and interesting journey in the garden and I hope it continues for many more years!

CMK- Great idea for a new thread!

I started gardening with my mom when I was pretty young (about five I think). Before that, I liked to smell the flowers and pick them, when allowed :)

My mom was always a big gardener (she learned from her grandfather) so we had mostly flowers when I was little. When we got a house with a bigger yard, my parents added a vegetable garden and that's when I started helping more. I've always liked gardening, but was mainly "the helper" until last year. Mom is now in a really cute new home (downsized) and the yard has been her project. She took out grass and added flowers, shrubs and a new vegetable garden.

Last year she hurt her arm (better now) and couldn't plant her mail-order plants when they arrived. So, for the first time, "the helper" was in charge of the planting (LOL) Long story short, those plants were put in, but roses kept appearing in the yard from clearance sales at local stores. I found out I like roses (they were mostly to cheer up mom) but I got kind of hooked. Now mom has more roses than she probably wanted, but she likes them and I started putting them in my yard this summer.

Since I'm in a little colder zone than mom (she's two miles away and in zone 5) I have to look for the hardier roses. I still bring home the occasional clearance rose--I can't resist those little abandoned blooms, but I'm trying to work in more old fashioned roses and maybe a few VERY hard David Austin. I have Tamora and she's been a real trooper. With our hot summers, she was the best bloomer I had this summer.

I did plant some veggies this year, and I was planning a potager for next summer (more formal veggie garden) but now that seems to have turned into a rose garden with herbs! Maybe I can fit in a vegetable garden behind that garden :)

woody, that farm sounds like a magical place for a child! I grew up outside Philadelphia and my mother always had wonderful gardens. We also had woods on two sides that allowed for marvelous explorations.

My mother never really taught us how to garden or anything about plants. My first attempt at gardening was to plant a couple of potato eyes in an out of the way spot. They grew like mad and then one day-gone! My mother didn't know what they were and had pulled them up! Oh well.

Never attempted anything else until I had my own place and now I am beginning in earnest-a little late (more than 50 years after the first try), but enthusiastic nonetheless.

What a fun thread! I am truly enjoying reading about everyones beginnings. I'm a little embarassed to tell how I started gardening. I was 62 yrs old and just winding down my real estate career. My husband retired at 61, a product of "downsizing". Well one day I was complaining about all the weeds in our shrubs, etc. and finally I went outside & starting pulling weeds... I was in a snit. A friend from up the street dropped in while I was weeding & says "Oh good, you are gardening." No I am weeding, not gardening I told him. He shows up a day later with all these plants he had thinned out of his extensive gardens and said " you'd better get these in the ground today or tomorrow or they will die". Well All I had was a shovel & a hoe, but I started digging. Then the next wk end at bridge club, the same friend announces that Carol is gardening and the hostess whose garden is breathtakingly beautiful, grabs a shovel & gathers some gorgeous plants to send home with me. This garden of mine has grown like topsy over the yrs. and has given me such pleasure & happpiness. Even my DH will occassionally dig a hole for a large plant for me. It is full of pass-along plants, winter sown plants and some expensive plants from my local garden center. I am now almost 68, still only using a hoe & shovel and I hope I have many more yrs. that I'm able to enjoy this. I truly am a late bloomer.

CMK, fun thread!

Woody, what a great introduction to gardening! You were very fortunate!

I grew up in the middle of the city. We had a small yard, but my dad managed to grow quite a bit. There was the veggie garden, raspberry & rhubarb patches, rose beds, etc. I helped with watering and cutting the grass (using a reel mower), but that was about it. Once I was on my own and living in apartments I started collecting houseplants. At one point had a few dozen. Now not a single one ... if you don't count the porch plants ... but none in the house.

It was a few years after we bought this house in '81 that I found myself interested in what was going on in the yard. Was all very much a learning experience. Lots of trial and error those first 10 years. I devoured Cooperative Extension info and had a couple southern gardening books that were my go-to bibles in those early days. Have been veggie gardening since '86. I'm big on hummingbird and butterfly plantings. We have hummers year round, so that offers the chance for even more plant diversity. This year I found myself drawn to introducing shrubbery to the flower beds in order to create more seasonal interest. I hope I can continue to do this for many years to come!

Love, Love, Love hearing how everyone got their start! I so enjoy having threads where we can all get to know a little more about each other.

-Carol, lol. What a wonderful story. It must be true then, whenever a gardener hears of an empty plot they want to cultivate it, even if it is not their own! It must be great to have gardening friends to swap plants with- the ones that got you addicted in the first place ;-D

On with story time!!!
CMK

This reads more like a saga but here goes...
When I was between 6 and 10 I was my gramps little helper for two weeks in the summer at their little summer cottage beside the sea. This is where I started my long love affair with plants and gardening.

From the age of 11 until I was married at the age of 18 this love affair with plants was put on a back burner for numerous reasons.

Then came the lean years the old not having a pot to p** in or..... you know how that goes. I did manage to plant a 10 cent pkg of nasturtium seeds, after digging a small space with a tablespoon spoon in they went. Wouldn't you know it we moved before they bloomed. The next place we lived I was given a pkg of cleome seeds, wouldn't you know it once again we moved before they bloomed.
The next place we bought I thought maybe this time I will have my garden. The people who DH worked for at the time gave me some dahlia tubers, you guessed it but this time we sold and moved before they bloomed.
They next 6 years we lived in a town where it rained continually I had a few plants but just a postage stamp yard so it didn't amount to much.

In 1965 at the ages of 27 and 28 we moved back to the island and bought the house we're in today. When we moved here there was nothing but grass, no garden to speak of with the exception of an old rose growing on the fence line, a diseased ornamental plum, and the beauty bush which our then cranky neighbor was up at the crack of dawn, throwing rocks at said bush where birds were welcoming the new day. Imagine just having the nerve to sit and sing their little heads off, how dare they.
Trying to get settled in and with 3 kids and not having much spare change for things like plants I did manage to buy and plant 3 tomato plants, 6 gladiolus corms and a little 18 inch high yellow cedar, the cedar I planted smack in the middle of the back yard. After some thought and constructive staring I decided I had not planted this tree in the best of places so moved it. Good thing I did, growing about a foot a year, we've been here 44 years, you do the math.

One morning after we'd been here for about 2 years, the phone rang and the voice on the other end said I hear you love plants and enjoy gardening, how would you like to come and work for us it's our busy season and we need help, we can fit your work hours when your kids are in school.... I was on my way, I got to work at something I loved and got payed for it, bonus, I finally had the spare chance to start a garden, I worked at this nursery for 7 years and learned a lot from the very knowledgeable nurseryman who owned it.

I then joined the local horticultural society (garden club). During the early years I grew Narcissus, Dahlias, Chrysanthemums, Begonias and Lilies amongst others flowers and vegetables for show and Fuchsias just because I loved them :o). I took judging courses just to see what the judges were looking for, I just wanted to become a competent exhibitor but somehow ended up becoming a judge.
I retired from this last year and now have come full circle to just wanting the magical cottage garden like my gramps had at his summer cottage by the sea. Although I still go in for collection different cultivars of particular plants that tweak my interest I'm looking for and trying to achieve what my gramps had in what I remember as being one of the most special times in my life all those years ago.
Informal, relaxing, a place for birds and butterflies to flit about. Roses and clematis spilling over, old fashioned flowers mixed with new, the sound of water trickling from the spillways of our two little pools. Veggies tucked in where I can still find a bit of bare earth and lets not forget the all the heirloom bean seed I seem to have acquired in the last 6 months, my latest addiction LOL.

Annette

Such wonderful stories from all of you!
I think gardening is in my blood. My paternal grandparents were farmers in rural Louisiana, and granny also had flowers around the raised porch. I particularly remember the big porch swing going over the hydrangeas below. They had strawberry patch, and we helped pick green beans and such. There were big pecan trees too that we would throw something heavy at the branches, to get the pecans to rain down. Back in the day they grew cotton.
My maternal grandparents lived in the heart of New Orleans, and had a small yard with cottage garden around the house. My mother and father always had gardens, flowers, shrubs, and some veggies. Today, mom is almost 80 and strictly is a cottage gardener, no veggies. Dad is deceased but loved the outdoors, growing perennials, shrubs, fruit and some veggies with Mom. He kept a plant hospital in a side alley, doctoring ailing plants back to health. We always shared and passed along. My main love of gardening is just being outdoors. I love the sun and the breeze and the natural world. Grew up outside, swimming, fishing, shrimping, crabbing, and growing stuff.
When I married and got a house of my own I lived near my parents, and we again consulted and helped with establishing the gardens and passalong plants. Mom worked for a plant nursery when we were older too. My neighbors in south Louisiana also gardened, it was the women's sort of group hobby. We all consulted, showed off, and passed along. It was so much fun and the garden season was virtually 12 mos down there!
Now I'm in north MS and pretty much by myself as far as gardening friends. My husband takes an interest and helps me alot, today he got 5 bags of leaves from a neighbor for me! I still love the outdoors and the sun, I have the agespots (I call them sunspots) to show for it! But at 53 I hope I have many more years to garden!

It started when I was three years old. My grandfather was a gardener and when walking home from playschool (it wasn't far and children were allowed to walk alone early in their lives), I would come across him working in someone's yard. He always let me to help him. From then until my late teens I gardened.

After I was married and we bought a house, the same one we're living in now, gardening began again. First all vegetables, then half flowers for picking, the my cottage garden. That's over 50 years altogether.

I can still remember Grandad's hard, rough hands.

Libby

What a great thread !! I've loved reading every word!

I suppose I inherited my love for the dirt - it comes from all sides. I don't remember my Grandparent's on my Dad's side having a vegetable garden, but my Grandfather loved to feed the birds, and my Grandmother seemed to always have something blooming. She had a sun porch that was wall to wall with African Violets, sometimes she would pinch off a leaf and fix a cup of water with aluminum foil on the top and poke the stem through a hole, we would get to take it home and watch the stem grow roots. She had a massive hydrangea at her back door. Bringing one of those massive flowers home in a jar was a real prize!
My Mom's parents always had a garden. Papaw was a gentle giant and always took care of the vegetable garden, while Grandmother was an amazing cook, and never let anything go to waste. He would fuss a little bit about how she would "dig up" the yard and how he had to mow around all the things she planted, but he let her have her own way. She loved her plants and the plants knew it and rewarded her (and everyone else that drove by the house) for it.
My Dad was a farmer by passion - he worked a job so he could pay to play in the dirt. We spent EVERY summer of our childhood in the field. No summer vacation for us - except the occasional trip to visit relatives.
The shame of it all was that no one took the time to teach us HOW to garden. Maybe we should have learned something while we were doing it, but nobody ever explained why we planted certain things at certain times of the year, or why some plants would be happy in certain environments and not in others. So as an adult, when I started plopping things into the ground and expected an abundance of blooms, I was terribly disappointed when it didn't happen, and why did it not all bloom at the same time, like the pictures in the magazine????? It got the point that since I apparently didn't know what to do, I just didn't do anything at all.
"Armchair gardener" right??
We moved to our present location several years ago and I'm just beginning to "get over it" and get out there and do it. Somehow it helps to know the name of the style of gardening I've always loved - I have a great neighbor who loves flowers as much as I do, and loves to talk about it even more....
I'm still no good at design and color combinations, I rarely have a plan and when I do, it never seems to work exactly right.
It's journey, maybe some day I'll get there.

What a wonderful thread. I love all of the Grandparent stories, mine all passed before I was born. My parents didn't garden much. My Mom taught me all of the native plants that could be eaten, and which ones to avoid. We moved around a lot. One place we lived had a raspberry patch. The surrounding woods had red huckleberry, wild strawberry, black caps, and wild blackberries(3 varieties). Another time Mom grew potatoes and tomatoes. I think they were sick of gardening, as they had to work on farms when they were younger. Most of the houses I have lived in as an adult, I just maintained what was there. My thumb was black, I even killed houseplants. The last place we lived I just put in Rhodies, a few familiar perrenials, and annuals. This new place (7years next week)was raw land that we built on. I brought some plants with me (blueberries, raspberries, lavenders). Some other things that have gone to the wayside. The last couple of years I have gone nuts. I moved several shrubs that were on the edge of the property that had been part of the neighbor's yard(they owned both parcels). The plants were behind an orchard we inherited. I was never able to see the flowers from the house. They have all been moved to behind the house where I can enjoy them. This year I put in 450 sq' of perrenial beds. The old orchard trees were taken down yesterday(left one apple, and two cherries). This coming year I will replace the fruit trees and put in raised veggie beds. I also am going to expand the rose garden. I am definately hooked. I have learned sooo much on this forum. Thank all of you. obtw, this property has all of the above wild berries growing on it.

My parents forced me into gardening. Long straight rows of butterbeans and peas. And there were tomatoes near the house. We spent every Saturday during the summer hoeing and picking. I remember sitting under a canopy in the backyard shelling beans when it was too hot to do it inside. I hated it. I swore I would NEVER be that guy again.

A few years later I had a small patch of dirt surrounding a patio at my condo. I started filling it with annuals, then perennials, then shrubs. When I sold it, it was beautiful.

When I bought this house, I really just wanted the yard and the basement. If I had a toilet and shower down there, I'd never come upstairs. So my second summer here, I started reclaiming the yard. This was my third summer - 2009. Next year will be bigger and better than ever. I just want to create a small patch of earth that I'm happy to call home. I still grow veggies, but not in long rows. I love fresh tomatoes, and provide more space for those than anything else. I've even taken out trees because I needed the sunlight.

what a lovely thread. Thanks for starting it. I am new to this forum, but this is a good place to begin.

I was around 8 years so. My parents bought a home that already had plants, but all that was done to it was mowing the lawn. The lot next door was full of poppies of various types and batchers buttons. I loved them. And we had an apricot tree that was full of apricots in the summer as well as a french plum tree. I loved the apricots, but not the plums. I used to work around the yard cleaning it up, but no one asked me to do so. All I remember having was iris and daffodils and some type of yellow daisy like flower whose leaves were sticky. I also played with cars, and made a little road and planted beans for my own plants. And then when I had a little kitchen elsewhere in the yard, I had dirt clots for potatoes and poppy seed pods for pepper shakers.

When I wanted money to go to the movies I found this one woman's garden that was just wonderful, and I asked her if I could have some of her flowers to sale to those that didn't have flowers, she would give me flowers, and I would take them to the trailer park and sell them to the house wives.

When I grew up and got married we moved into a rental house, and because I loved tulips I bought and planted some bulbs. I spent hours in the garden, but we moved before I could ever see the tulips come up. After that we lived in apartments and had potted plants. Then when I was older and divorced I moved into a house in the country, and my neighbor had an herb garden and got me started in herbs. Then I moved from there after a few years and it was back to just a few plants until I got a home of my own. Now I have a Garden Club lady that helps me, and she and others have given me many plants, but hers are not for cottage gardens, so most went in the back yard where there is more shade, so I have my hostas and ferns. but I have roses and herbs out front as well as other types of flowers and plan on adding some veggies this spring. I never did plant tulips, but I want batcher's buttons because I still love those.

There is also acreage next door, and so I throw seeds over the fence, mostly my cleome plants that I have come to love and could see growing everywhere. Maybe next year I can throw out extra batcher button seeds. Hard to say what will grow back there as there is so much already, like stick tights and other things that I have not identified. wild things.

Like many others here, I started when I was quite young....around 7 or so. My parents were British, so I come by the gardening gene naturally. Daddy manned the large vegetable and fruit garden and my mother and grandmother, who lived with us until I was 8, tended the flowers.......LOTS of flowers :-) We had a double sized lot, nearly a full acre. My dad gave me a small corner of the veggie garden and the first thing I planted was petunias. It just grew from there.

When I moved away from home in college, most of my 'gardening' was restricted to house plants - no land. But an apartment with a sunny balcony changed all that and I haven't stopped gardening since. Containers, in the ground, in rental properties (landlords loved me - the gardens were always way nicer when I left than when I moved in) and in my own home. Finally, I decided to take my love of gardening professionally, went back to school, got a degree in horticulture and landscape design and expanded my own gardening experience to gardening (sort of) for others. I design, consult, mentor and teach.

I recently moved from a large and complicated garden of 25 years to a smaller and somewhat neglected garden in the woods. I still garden professionally as well but now at least I'll have sufficient free time to devote to a new garden.

btw, my mother gardened seriously until her mid 80's when she became to ill to do so anymore. Same with my dad. I figure I've still got another 20-25 years worth of gardening in me :-)

This is such fun, reading everyone's stories.

My earliest memory is from when I was about 3, playing in the sandbox while my dad worked in his garden & mom was hanging clothes. And so it went . . . until I was in my 30s and decided I should have a veggie garden.

A few years later DH, DS & I moved deep into the woods and all I had time to do for 14 years was pick up sticks and rake leaves.

In 2000 we moved to Texas where I can grow things almost year-round. I enjoy gardening as an activity too much to have what I'd consider a "designed" garden. Also, I'm too undisciplined to stick to a plan.

I don't exactly know when I started gardening. All I recall was an enjoyment of being in the garden after a day of school. Never mind if it was high noon and the sun was hot, I'd still be out there enjoying the garden. There's an old photo of me as a baby in my great aunts rose garden. I learned to propagate plants by cuttings, aeration or seeds, while very young. Learned to do bonsai when I was 15 - and I had just an excitement of learning the hobby. I recall the challenge was to bonsai a coconut tree -- now if anyone has seen a coconut seed, you can imagine the challenge of trying to fit the seed in a bonsai pot (the pot was smaller). Later when I reached Canada and the garden world opened up to me, I thought I was in heaven. I had such a 'high' just buying plants to get my garden started. I was thrilled with the Toronto Garden Show (now named Canada Blooms) began.... I still am enjoying the garden so many decades since I started. Ihope I never ever tire of it.

I never had much of an interest in gardening growing up. Then, I got married and my husband and I built our home a yr later. We added a few shrubs for landscaping, and bought a hosta, that I have divided several times over in the past 32 yrs. But I really never got into growing things until I helped out in my father-in-laws greenhouse a few times transplanting seedlings. Things just kind of grew from there ( no pun intended). This family greenhouse was around for many yrs. My husband's parents and and grandparents worked together in it.Kind of reminded me of the Walttons, except they had a sawmill.They raised a family of 7 with its profits.It had to be moved and rebuilt twice,the final time after a major flood in 1950. Many yrs later my father in law sold it when he retired. That guy worked it for about a yr or two and let it fall to ruins. Now I enjoy trying to root roses and the rest of my plants.Plus starting things from seeds.
Tammy

I'm laughing at Token's answer! My gardening experiences were similar in many respects.
I started at 2-3 in grandma's garden. My job was to wash the fresh vegetables, and that I surely did. My mom jokes you never had to peel a vegetable I'd washed and washed. I can remember doing this in the metal bucket and I loved that new potatoes could shine like Easter Eggs and I could eat as many carrots as I could manage and there would still be some for dinner. My favorites to cultivate were gooseberries and I enjoyed picking the wild raspberries. When I became a teenager, my parents disabilities forced me into doing all the veg. growing at home except that my mom stood over me and barked orders and I HATED that. I learn best by experience and not by nag.
As soon as I got my own apartment I began to balcony garden. When we moved to DC we had a ground floor apartment and the neighbors let me plant everything up. I had a huge amount of indoor plants, and learned a lot at the Washington Cathedral greenhouses. The occupational therapist at the school I taught at began teaching me about horticultural therapy and gave me a 2 year crash course in it after school hours.
When we bought our home I started to pull up the grass as much as possible and gardened in it that following Spring. My friend brought me huge bags of seeds from Burpee's expired seeds (he was a seed rep) and that started the whole grow it from seed/plant collector mentality.
Since then I've become more of a designer but I still love experimenting with new plants. I can't recommend plants clients unless know how to grow them!! I've always gardened organically and my family has too without really thinking much about it (it's just cheap!).
Now we have so much more property I can indulge in my fanatical vegetable gardening, branch into fruit (which I've never grown on my own) and start into trees (which are also newer to me) - and there is plenty of room to indulge my colorist theories of design, and learn more about flowering shrubs and broadleaf evergreens, as well as native and medicinal herbs.

Now I am teaching my hubby to garden, as well as many clients and lots of friends. I teach organic food and home sustainability and design gardens for Atlanta's alternative music and arts community.

Well, my brother and I pulled a plow. Actually, we pulled a cultivator while my dad leaned on the handles to hill potatoes. Lots of weeding and picking raspberries (my dad was selling a crate a day) Needless to say gardening wasn't my favourite thing. One day I noticed small weeds growing in the raspberry rows and thought it would be nice to cultivate them without being asked. My dad wanted to know who cultivated the spinach. It didn't occur to him that we would do something without being asked -- normally a good assumption. :) He wanted to be mad but couldn't be.

I've mainly played at gardening, other than a brief episode trying to farm and market garden. Since we moved (2 years) to a house with a large garden, I've been getting serious about wanting some production. It's a different game when you're deliberate about what you're doing. I've been working on the flowers as well. The switch to deliberate for flowers was about 5 years ago.

The garden I remember as a youth was my aunt's. A seemingly random mix of flowers and vegetables with lots of surprises.

I remember my dad coming home from work every evening in the summer, eating dinner and then going out to the big vegetable garden in the back yard and working until almost dark. I remember tomato and pepper seedlings on all the windowsills in spring, and the squash vines growing waaaay out of the garden onto the lawn in the summer. I remember string tied to the tall bird feeder post and scarlet runner beans growing up the strings.

I also remember staring at huge salads and mounds of vegetables at dinner, knowing I had to choke it all down before I could leave the table. No salad dressing for the salad or spices for the veggies - that wasn't 'healthy'. Everything tasted either just green, or green and bitter. Bletch. At least I could feed the coleslaw to the cat when my parents weren't looking.

However, gardening was in the blood, and there was no escaping my destiny. :o)

So, since I had issues with vegetables, I grew flowers. At first, when I was still living with my parents, I grew the easy flowers such as cosmos, zinnias and cleome. Then, soon after I got married and moved to my own house, I came across a Fine Gardening magazine issue that changed my life. The front of the magazine had pictures of roses that were unlike any I'd ever seen in real life... They resembled those big blowsy peony-type roses that you would see in old dutch paintings. They were a completely different species from the hybrid teas I knew. They were called hybrid musk roses, and I was in love.

Fast forward a few years and almost a hundred roses later. I discovered gardenweb.com, and started seeing posts in the roses forums about a hideous disease called Rose Rosette Disease. I started researching flowers that I could use in place of roses in case mine got the disease and had to be destroyed.

I haven't found a replacement for roses yet, but I did discover many types of flowers that I'd never seen in any of the catalogs I receive. I can't afford to buy many plants, but I can afford seeds, so that's how I got most of my new flowers in the last couple years.

Recently, I've come full circle and started growing (some) vegetables. I started this past summer with some tomatoes and cantaloupe. Of course, this was the worst year in decades to grow tomatoes, but I still managed to get a few before the tomato plants died of blight, or drowning, or something. DH really loved the tomatoes, so I will build a raised bed this winter and grow them properly (meaning, farther apart than 6 inches) next year. Even if DH didn't love them, I'd be tempted to grow tomatoes just for the funny names some of them have. Someday, maybe I'll learn to cook vegetables that actually taste good. I imagine it requires a lot of butter.

Oh, and I would describe myself as a "collector" gardener and not a "designer" gardener. I keep seeing flowers that I MUST have, but I don't have a clear idea of where to plant them. I admire beautiful gardens that have 'drifts of color', but I've never been able to achieve that.

Lois in PA

This is such an incredible thread. The stories are so great and I've enjoyed reading them.

I got my start early in the garden, although I DID NOT like it AT ALL! We had a large veggie garden and every spring we'd get truckloads of manure that we all spread. OK, that is GROSS for a little kid (who did not live on a farm but in the suburbs where everyone else had manicured lawns)!! LOL!! We also had to pull weeds and my mother would drag me and my brother to the nurseries where we would be bored for hours!! I look back now and have to laugh. My mom says she was sure I would NEVER be interested in gardening because I disliked it so much as a kid.

When we built our first house I started thinking about gardening. All of a sudden I seemed obsessed with learning all about plants. I was fortunate that my mom had been gardening for some time by then, my sister was also gardening and I found an incredible local nursery, so I had some great resources.

After gardening for a number of years I looked back at my parent's yard growing up. It really was beautiful and one day I commented to my mom about how talented she was as a novice gardener with 4 young kids to have planned and planted such a well-landscaped yard. She said the landscape plan came with the house! I called her a cheater! We both laughed and laughed!!

The bond between my mom and I with gardening is amazing. We talk on the phone for hours about our gardens as well as gardens we can visit together. Now when we go to nurseries together we spend hours and I cherish every minute. Gardening is never gross or boring for me anymore.

I guess you would call me a late starter. If someone would have told me 3 years ago I would be gardening I would have laughed.

Both my parents worked and our yard had the neat lawn and a few shrubs, mowing the grass was about it.

My DH and I have 5 acres and every year he always plants a veggie garden. I had no desire to have anything to do with this garden. I worked and felt like I just had better things to do than get my hands dirty. Well the last 2 years my hands have seen more dirt than they have ever in 58 years.

One day I passed by the french doors that leads out to the back patio and thought what an ugly yard. I'm talking really ugly. No grass, no shrubs, no plants, nothing just weeds. My DH thought I had lost my mind when I picked up my first plant at Lowe's (that was the spring of 08). I brought that little plant home (it was a Mexican Petunia). Well within a week that little plant had pink flowers all over it and I was hooked. With the help of DH we cleared all the weeds out, brought in topsoil and my backyard went from an ugly duckling to a swan (well maybe not swan yet, but getting there). I did learn that not all plants you buy at a box store will survive in our Texas 100+ degree and dry weather. DH put in a sprinkler system and I found out really fast that the sprinklers do great for the lawn but not for my plants so had to revise and put in soaker hoses. I also learned really fast that I could go broke buying plants from box stores so I went on Craigslist and under wanted explained I was new to gardening and if anyone had extra plants or seeds I would like to buy them. Well I had so many wonderful people respond and just give me plants and seeds that I now share with others.

Everytime I pass by a plant I wonder how in all my years I had passed by this wonderful gift that God has put on this earth for our pleasure.

Everyone has such great stories and this has been so interesting to read. Great thread CMK!

Lipother- your aunt's garden sounds so interesting. What kind of surprises were there? I only ask, because I'm designing a garden for my nieces and am always looking for good ideas :)

Well, this is inspiring, and I am inspired to open up!!

I remember my Mother and both Grandmothers gardening when I was very small. The next door neighbours had an orchard. When I was very little, I remember my Mum and several neighbours tending a huge veg garden at the back of our huge lots. Fast-forward to teen-age years, and many of my Mum's perennial borders towards the back of the lot were abandoned, and I began trying to restore them - with no knowledge or encouragement. My Mum thought it was kinda cute, but offered no help. In my mid-twenties, with a DH, I started a garden at his home on the river. He roto-tilled about a 20' x 40' plot, and I spent many hours pulling the grass clods out of it. My MIL and the neighbours despaired that I would gain anything from this sandy soil, but DH put a pump in the river, and I watered like a maniac. We had lots of beans, tomatoes, corn, rhubarb, cukes, broccoli, I even tried cabbages and cauliflowers. I don't remember it all, but it was scarfed up happily, and I learn how to make pickles and tomato sauce. We split up, and I moved back into the city, with nowhere to garden, then bought my 1st home of my own. Lots of shade, so though I grew some tomatoes, etc., it was mostly flowers. I think that's why this new home is so special - I have a veg garden again. And I am loving it!!!

Nancy.

For a cottage gardener the surprises probably wouldn't be. But, it was the first time I saw flowers and vegetables growing together. It was neat seeing carrots and other vegetables hidden behind flowers. I just have impressions, not real memories. However, the mixing of flowers and vegetables, opportunistic planting, and apparent lack of structure has stayed with me. Subconsciously, I try to emulate something I barely remember.

As to type of gardener, for flowers, I'm a scavenger. I try to stretch what I have, can scrounge, or rescue, to fill the space I have. Then I make more space :)

Oh my, what a fun thread, but a way to relive some memories..some may have been painful, some pleasure but you know what, all of you have survived and the only thing that's missing throughout all this thread is pics of your flower beds. I was looking forward to reading your stories/memories but also to see pictures of your flowerbeds.

I was going to say you could just search the Garden Photo galleries for ljpother to see the pictures I have posted here. They just had the pictures I posted since July. Does the search just do six months (didn't see a filter) or do they dump the pics.