Started with seeds last Fall to see what would happen, started too soon but it worked out (full house). Always working in the yard, great exercise. Last year brought on the Hosta addiction but it will be curbed somewhat due to job downsizing but always love to trade/swap.
Have been rescuing a yard from distruction these past few days. They wanted to rip everything up and put in grass so we volunteered to help preserve the plants. Big job and heavy.
Paws

Hi Joe, I'm Manda and I'm new here. Thought I'd just give a little response to your post in an effort to get to know other people on this board.

-What got you started?
I have always been kind of a nature buff. I love camping and used to love helping my mom tend to her veggie and flower gardens when I was a kid. When I was in high school I had a small herb garden with things like thyme, pennyroyal, sage, rosemary, etc that I used for cooking (except the pennyroyal of course.) Now that I have my own home (which my husband owned before I moved in) and my husband has not taken very good care of the yard, I have taken it on as my own project to start getting the lawn and yard in shape, getting some nice landscaping done and some nice flowers planted. Maybe next year I will be ambitious enough to try a vegetable garden! I'd love some homegrown cucumbers and carrots for salads like my mom used to have. :)

-What's your fav kind of plants/group (either name or something like tropicals or perennials)
I like pretty much everything. I'm a big fan of "old fashioned" flowers like lily of the valley (which I can't find anywhere around here,) bleeding hearts and things like that that my grandmom used to have in her yard. I do love tropical and exotic plants though!

-What have you done that's interesting that has to do with plants?
Not much yet! Lol. I once planted a tree for Arbor Day when I was in school. So far I haven't done anything too interesting. Maybe in a couple of weeks I'll have some success stories to share. I just planted some bulbs, seeds, and some other plants today so I hope they flourish!

Nice to meet you Joe! Have a great day, everyone!

Good question Joe. I love watching things grow - be it children, animals or plants.
Veggies are my favorite plants. Nothing from a grocery ever tastes as good as what's fresh from the garden. Not only do they feed you, some are as pretty as any flower :)
Other than that I like perennial flowers, with a sprinkling of annuals mixed in.
SOS

Manda - if you live around Iowa City or West Branch I have lily of the valley I can share.

Hi Joe, conversation is finally picking up here. I started gardening with a few hostas someone gave me. I planted them in the hot sun and the leaves burned every year. When we moved I brought the hostas with me and planted them in a cooler, shady spot where they are very happy. I've made some good decisions and some very, very bad ones. The last few years I've been concentrating on planting trees and shrubs for wildlife and native plants. Grasses intrigue me but I haven't planted any yet - there are so many I'm a little intimidated.

Cricket

Hi Joe!
I started gardening in my pre teen years. I've always loved it. I lived in an apartment the first couple of years after leaving the nest. I started window boxes inside. I planted tomatoe seeds. I never thought ahead to where they would go when bigger.
My favorite flower is lupine. I start all kinds of different types in the winter. I have a yard full of them. I also love columbine. That's another thing I grow from seed. I have Many flower beds. The largest is over 100' long. It has curves and paths. I'm what they call an obsessed gardener. (but aren't we all?)
I just added some chimney block at one of the entrances.
I put them 3 blocks high on both sides of the path. The whole in the center is now a planter. I put varigated vinca, aspargus fern and purple sweet potatoe vine in them.
I found them on freecycle.com. I belong to that group. If you don't no about it, check it out. It's a great place for freebees. I've found great yard junk.

Well, I grew up on a farm and my job was to weed our HUGE veggie garden. Boy, I did NOT like gardening ;)

Then after getting married and buying our house, this unexplanable urge came over me. It was like, "I must plant something!" And the joy it brought! I love seeing things grow from seed. I love seeing things flourish where they are at. There are so many different plants to grow with such varying forms, it is always amazing. I happen to believe that God planned it that way ;) and being out there in the dirt makes me feel closer to Him.

I'm trying to pass down my love of gardening to my children. My ds is obsessed with weeds and will point them out in everyones' yards. He knows they are not supposed to be there because he sees me out weeding. I guess, over the years, I've overcome my dislike of it. ;)

Tanna B.

Well, a farmer's daughter here. Mom always had a very large veggie garden and played with alot of seeds and plants. I got the bug in highschool, when my Uncle sent me a very large box of cactus from his home. I have been hooked on cactus and sedum ever since. I live on an acerage, and have LOTS of plants, both inside and out. I am trying to redo my gardens outside, as they have been neglected over the last couple of years.
My 15 year old son already has "dibs" on my big jade plant and several others....hehe!
My hubby thinks this is a "sickness", but realizes it could be worse! lol!!!!!!

My daughter graduates in a few weeks, so I have been out digging, pulling, spraying, and swearing.....hehe! Been absolutey beautiful out!!!!!

MonaRae

-what got you started? Hard to say really..... probably I got into gardening because I didnt have a yard of my own for a few years (hubby was in the USAF and we moved alot- always in base housing or apartments) so houseplants were all I had. When we finally landed in our own home, I guess I just went NUTS and like most everything I do, I read as much as I can about it so I have lots of books about gardening.

-what's your fav kind of plants/group (either name or something like tropicals or perennials) Hands down my favorite type of plants are waterplants- and since I have a small fish pond, it's so much fun to play with !!!! I like to try different water plants every year but ALWAYS have some waterlilies growing. I have ALOT of perennials in my gardens and I have several BIG herb gardens, all culinary herbs which I grow for my own use and to package and sell/share with friends. I plant a few veggies every yr too- tomatoes of course !!

-what have you done that's interesting that has to do with plants? In my front yard I have an ash tree that I bought from a nursery that is a certified Dwight D Eisenhower tree- once you buy it and plant it, you go to their website and register your tree so you get a certificate that you have an authentic baby tree from the property that once was the family home of President Eisenhower.

This may sound odd, but I think my gardening passion started when I was VERY young, and waiting for my mother. As an Episcopal Priest's wife, in the Deep South, she spent a lot of time visiting the congregation in some rather grand old homes (which was particularly ironic, as we were poor as the proverbial church mice!)

While she'd be inside, in her white gloves and hat, being served tea and beaten biscuits on silver and china, I was allowed (or was I sent off to not break things? LOL) to wander the most enchanting old, mossy gardens (if you're thinking "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" or something along the lines of Tennesse Williams, about now, you're right..) So, I'd get to spend hours alone, playing under giant old magnolia or live oak trees, discovering forgotten sundials or mossy benches hidden beneath bleeding hearts, enchanted and completely happy.

When I read "The Secret Garden" (sorry; can't figure out how to underline; thus the quotes, instead)I was completely DONE for! I've been "gardening"--starting with fairy gardens under the shrubbery--ever since.

Currently, I've just evolved from a 15 year Cottage Garden obsession (difficult to maintain in the unforgiving weather of the Upper Midwest!) to a more native plants/wildlife sanctuary/prairie style. I've still got my beloved delphiums and lilies and antique roses, but since we moved out onto the prairie, I'm working at establishing a backyard habitat (I'm certified!), a mini-orchard, and concentrating on native grasses and shrubs, as an antidote to the gawdawful monoculture/chemicalized agribusiness going on, daily, all around us.

My husband and I love to tour arboretums (I suppose that should be "arboreta"?) whenever we travel. They're often gorgeous, serene parks and you always get new ideas for landscaping or for new plants to try. Aside from that, I'm really excited about the whole Backyard Habitat Program, nationwide, hosted by the National Wildlife Federation (www.nwf.org)and am hoping to find more folks, locally, into this.

Great questions, Joe!! I too was once a farm girl, then an acreage girl, so I have had dirt under my fingernails most of my life. When we bought our old Victorian home there was an established garden plot, so it was fairly easy to get it up and running again. For many years I was busy with veggies, and canning and freezing, for our family of six, plus foster children. As the children grew up and I didn't need such a large garden I slowly began morphing the veggie patch to flowers. More than I have ever had. Now I have no veggies except a few tomatoe plants.
So I would have to say I have been gardening in one form or another about 50 years.
My favorite plant? I have several, since I am a genealogist I have found plants that have been in my family for years and have gotten starts if I could or replaced if I could not find a start. That was why I was so excited to get the magenta violets, one of my ancstors had brought some from England, and through the years they disappeared. I also love trees, we have the third largest ginko in Iowa in our yard, as well as a hundred year old tulip tree, many spruces, a purple beech, a magnolia, a black gum, and more.
I guess the only thing interesting I have done with plants is to make pressed flowers for greeting cards, oh and I tried to make some natural dye, but I wasn't very sucessful.
Now Joe, why don't you tell the rest of the us your answers to these questions?
Jo

I started when I was a young girl, it was my father who did the hard work and encouraged me. Every year we used to sell seed packets for our public school. I loved looking at the pictures on those seeds.

My gardening has been on again off again partly because I never had anybody to help. My first vegetable garden I dug with a fork, had to deal with the grass covering, husband started it and I spaded the rest of the whole plot which was pretty large, then planted it. We moved from there and I have so much shade I never had a good place for a vegetable garden but did have a few tomato plants and tried different kinds of flowers. One year the neighbor's let me use part of their yard and another year a farmer let me use a plot on his. Not watering and having to go so far to weed in our humid hot summers kind of dampened my enthusiasm because few things really did well.

I've not had a whole lot of success overall with anything but my trees I planted which don't require much care and some roses I planted which didn't get much care. Everything else is so labor intensive, I gave it up for years but decided this year I'm tired of the yard not looking nice.

I'm having mediocre success, things overall are not doing that well, tried roses from cuttings, think they are all failures now although some still have a little life left in them. The plants that have done the best are in containers.

I'm not from the rototiller/add good stuff to your soil generation, and I can't do the heavy work of adding things and turning the soil very well. Everything is so dry this year in my yard; I don't know why. We've had some rain.

Hi Joe, I guess ive loved gardening forever[Well 51 feels like forever LOL> my Dad loved it and i took after him. I love sitting out in am and watching birds go in houses or feeders, and seein all flowers bloom and smelling the herbs and watching the butterflies, or hearing my 5 yr old gdaughter say what bird is that, or how deep do i plant this .I cant think of anything better to pass down , then the simple pleasures of nature.I know i think of my dad everytime im out in the yard and i smile cause I know part of him is rite out there too.. Dessa