I do it for all the reasons you stated, plus it just calls out to me. I get the itch to create, I guess.

All the reasons you say. I have spent most of the past couple weeks outside. This time of year in the South is the most pleasant as there are no bugs and the weather is wonderful. I love to see things neat and nice, I love flowers and green things. I love the satisfaction of a project started and completed all by myself. I don't mind sweat at all but I hate bugs. So I usually get our really early in the AM in the hotter part of the Summer and work around the house ...I follow the shade :) Then my reward is to get in the pool ! I was in 2 days this week and the water was wonderfully cool 74.3 !! I got in my 1/2 mile and got out and had a hot shower :) In the hot summer it is so pleasant to be out there after I mow the grass or pull weeds or whatever. If you don't love it perhaps you could just do pots..there is a very nice thread right now on here about pots. Or just start with a very small bed and some annuals. It is really nice to plant perennials as you can start watching for them every Spring. Or maybe gardening just isn't for you . It sure isn't for everyone..just like baking or sewing or decorating...whatever you enjoy is what you should do . c
here is a pic from last Spring...roses hadn't started yet.

The garden is one of my happy places and gardening is one of my favourite things to do. I can't garden all day anymore but a couple of hours playing always smooths out my rough edges. Plus I have something that give me great enjoyment to look at and the birds like it too. :D

I used to last longer than I do now that I am 61. I just love it all, except maybe in the wild back when I am trying to get rid of pokeweed, or brambles that seem to appear out of nowhere and grow huge before I realize they are there. I love being outside. I love planting trees and shrubs and flowers and hosta and anything else that catches my eye. I love creating beautiful containers for the two patios and the deck. I love looking out and knowing that I did that. I am trying to embrace the beauty of the weeds I haven't gotten to yet. Sometimes, I think I will hire someone, but I know I would miss being outside and I am not one who likes to just sit outside-I try, but I always spot something that I can tweak, pull up, move, or water. I did have a landscaper at one point, but he never did anything as well as I do, so here I am back in the yard whenever I get the chance. ;)

Come summer, it gets too hot here to stay out after about 11:00 am. Evenings can be lovely though.

I'm up north so our gardening year has barely begun. We're still having frosts at night.

But still, I'm out whenever I can.

I can do it for 8-12 hours at a time.

I am compelled to do it, and have been almost as long as I can remember. Once I was hospitalized for a lengthy time, but still somewhat ambulatory. I went all over the hospital towing my IV pole and a med cart I had repurposed to carry re-potting, fetilizing and pruning materials and equipment. I worked on every plant on every nurses' station where they would let me.

A very astute fellow patient noticed this (who I later discovered was a famous psychoanalyst) observed to me that I probably did this pretty odd thing because it helped me handle my stress. She was dead right.

I garden because it is deeply gratifying (and calming) to care for plants. To provide them with the conditions they need to grow from tiny to big; from seed to fruit; from dormant to flowering; from failing to flourishing; from "not growable here" to "you grow what"?

I don't grow anything to make a prettty garden. I am totally bored with pretty gardens -they seem a complete waste of time, to me. I grow my flowering plants in straight lines in beds, like vegetables. I am only interesting in the actual growing, not the landscaping aspect.

I've been caring for some of my individual plants for nearly fifty years. I come from a long line of gardeners. Some of my plants are divisions of plants from my grandmother's garden which were moved from her house in PA when she died in 1953 to my Mother's gardens in MA and VA and thence to my own in in MA and NY.

It may seem funny (or maybe macabre), but I have written plans for these plants tucked next to my will.

L.

I remember when my kids were both little, I hired a neighbour kid to babysit for a few hours so I could garden without worrying about them. My friends were dumbfounded. They kept saying, "you have time to yourself, and you're gardening?!"

liriodenron-

What a Renaissance Woman you are, I always enjoy your posts.

Rock on.

sandyponder

I love my garden. It's early here for gardening but I have seeds and got my rototiller tuned up. I'm ready to go!!

I get lost in my garden. It calls me and I think I'm going to just go down for a minute and two hours later...

I like to grow things but I hate preserving it so I give lots away.

I garden because. It's creating beauty, it's thrilling, calming, stress relieving ( I like to think so anyway), peaceful, joyous, exciting, wondrous, spiritual, productive, challenging, rewarding and energizing.

The arrangement, i.e. design, is what fuels the physical work and gives me food for thought as I think about what each area needs to look best and how to accomplish it.

The downside, I am almost fifty and cannot do what I could ten years ago. Bummer.

I garden for the same reason I clean the house. I don't like cleaning the house, but I like having a clean house. I don't like gardening, but I like having nice looking gardens.

Whatever I can get DH to do, or even just to have him help me makes it easier, and I have the landscape as low maintenance as possible, but it still needs tending. And I hate weeding. That's why I have and enjoy my indoor plants...no weeding!

I do it because the end result is so gratifying - I love watching how my yard and planting beds change with the seasons. We've been living in this home for 30 years and I still get excited when the early blooms herald the coming spring - when the snowdrops poke up through the snow and the witch hazel bursts into yellow bloom.

Right now my hellebores and camillas are showing off in the front bed while the daffodils are cheering up the edge of the yard under the wisteria tree that's just about to open. We added 15 white heather around the base of the Atlas Blue Cedar at the corner of the house and they're full of tiny white flowers.

As for the actual physical part of gardening I do tire of it. I had both knees replaced last year and while I've recovered beautifully it's still not easy to get down on my knees to work in the dirt - even with a thick foam pad. I've never been able to handle the hot, humid summers so my gardening is over once the temperature rises. After that all I do is walk around with Round Up to contain those nasty weeds.

I like gardening but get overwhelmed/discouraged if there are large spaces or too much too do. I live in a semi tropical area so weeds grow crazy fast, the summer heat and humidity last a long time and we have vicious bugs. So for about five months out of the year, it isn't very much fun.

This post was edited by deee on Sun, Apr 21, 13 at 8:34

I used to love gardening, but got overload living in the same house for 20+ years, then tackling the elementary school - where moms would sign up to volunteer, but when you actually called them to schedule a work day they conveniently forgot they volunteered. :-/ Why did I garden? I love being outdoors, working with my hands, seeing the results and knowing I had a hand in creating something so beautiful.

Our last place had a large corner lot. It would take me 4-5 days to go completely around the lot and get everything (trim, weed, etc etc etc). On top of that, mulching or putting out pinestraw. All of the above twice a year. Then there was (what felt like) constant leaf raking. When I was young, it seemed like good exercise. DH got to take over that job later when the backpack blower was created. And please don't remind me of the years we had an excellent acorn crop!! DH cut the grass, blew and did the weed eater during grass season (weekly).

I also had houseplants, which I either tossed (old and kept for sentimental reasons) or gave away. I haven't had a single live plant in our house until recently - bought an orchid.

The only gardening I do now if a few pots for front/back verandas and driveway. There is a long flower bed along the driveway that needs deadheading during the summer, but in comparison, it's nothing to our last house.

This post was edited by allison0704 on Sun, Apr 21, 13 at 8:16

liriodenron, I think my dh would want to marry you. :) We have two large garden plots and a separate strawberry plot, which we've already eaten from even though we had an ice storm. In ALL of dh's spare time he's outside piddling in the gardens. Yesterday he didn't come inside until 5 when I made him take me to dinner. lol.

I used to do all the canning and now I've gladly given him the job & he loves it.

I do the flowers, but as I've gotten older the heat and humidity zaps any energy I have. Last summer I almost fainted just watering the Roses!

Which is why I'm not complaining about these cold fronts we get once a week and then it goes back to the 70s.

My gardening is pretty much in the spring and I get the fever to plant pretty bad. I get my vegetable beds going, refurbish my porch potted plants, cut back the dead stuff from winter and mulch the beds. Well, sometimes the yard guy does the mulching for me. We also work on a new area to plant/landscape since we built our house five years ago and we're taking one section at a time.

I usually spend a solid three or four hours at a time before I've had enough. Spring in Texas is like nothing else. We really cherish it here. The air is cool, the sun is warm, the grass is green and the bugs haven't come out yet. Then full on summer hits by mid-May and the 100+ temps puts everything into survival mode. No one gardens then, unless you want to start at 5 or 6am.

I am enjoying reading your responses! When we moved into this house, the landscaping was mature, pretty, and doing fine. I have a yard maintenance man.

I live in SoCal, and it's been great watching things bloom the past month or so- I have bougainvillea, birds of paradise, day lilies, jasmine, oleander, camellias, and cactus.

I'm an awful gardener. I love the planning and chosing of plants and placement, but I HATE tending to them. I'm so bad about it that DH has to water everything or else it'd die.

I love to prune and clean out and cut back and shape-and I love a natural design, lots of things compteting with one another and growing harmoniously together. My landscaping is definitely not a groomed one. I can't get on my knees to garden or weed, but I can wield a shovel and a hoe pretty well!

I don't plant annuals, because I am bad at watering, so I'm all about perennials, I love to see how they grow and try to get ones that will bloom at different times of the year. My backyard is almost to the point where I'll get spring thru fall color continuosly-just need to get some more bulbs and tubers planted.

I work in nature, so I love being surrounded by shrubs and trees and native plants. I do not do vegetable gardening, my DH does that, but I do the planning of where to put what! My dream job is to be a landscape designer-let clients hire someone else to do the tending-let me do the planning!

I love to garden. The week ahead is supposed to be gorgeous, so I will try to get out there as much as possible. I don't have a very big yard, so I have about maxed out the usable space. I'll be spreading mulch, filling pots, digging out ivy (it would eat the house if left to its own devices), so on and so forth.

I want to plant a new tree alongside my house but I have to figure out which one will work. So many trees, plants, shrubs, weeds, so little time!

I am getting a little older and I can work for an hour or so and then I go in and rest. I used to be able to be out there for hours.

Honestly, I can go all day too. When it is hot, I will take a break in the shade with a cold drink (that is when Coke tastes wonderful to me, or chips). I carry rocks, double dig beds, prune, weed, etc. The things I shy away from are power tools (the vibrations of the weed eater is difficult) and I am too lazy to push the wheelbarrow up and down the hill with rocks. On windy days I find my energy is zapped much quicker though and am more likely to turn in early.

The why of it has a lot of factors. I work at home on the computer and it does not require much in the way of creativity. Working in the garden gives me a change of scenery, sunshine, movement, and a place to create and work. It is also a classroom where I can study and observe. It is a challenge too. My erratic climate certainly keeps me on my toes (last week we went from lows of mid-30s to 17, a terrible swing). I love the realm of possibilities offered in gardening. Not to mention, it is easier for me to swing $5 on a plant than it is to come up with the dollars to decorate the house. Not to mention, I also have a very hard time exercising "just because," but gardening keeps my butt moving because I have a purpose. I think the repetitive tasks also help me to get my thoughts together and it is a way to get away from the kids without paying for a babysitter. A much easier way to meditate and contemplate. With some of the gardening I can eat it too!

Timely post as this is what I've been doing this afternoon. I do not "love" gardening although I mostly enjoy it. I do find it is a creative outlet. I love doing container gardens and that is one thing I did today - at least out front. Still have plenty more to do on the patio area out back. I absolutely love spending time outdoors and love flowers and plants. I cannot imagine NOT having flowers/landscaping, etc. and I must also have houseplants. Bought a new one today LOL. Also visited our most favorite local nursery over the weekend.

My mom's dad raised iris for much of his adult life. People came every year to see his gardens and buy his iris. After his death, I found one of his little notebooks with notations about where iris were in the gardens, what new varieties he had "bred", etc. My mom inherited that love and had roses for years. I guess I come by it natural.

Last year we broke down and had our front professionally landscaped. After much trial and error and $$$, we just couldn't get it right. We've done the rest ourselves and it's fairly low maintenance. We don't plant any annuals, have tons of periennels, and there are things blooming early spring through very late fall. I'm not one who wants to be in the gardens/flowers all day long.

As for veggie gardens, with our lifestyle, we just don't have the time to devote to much of that. We always do cukes and tomatoes (got tomatoes this weekend too!) and a few peppers, etc. Our camping and traveling time makes veggie gardening hard too.

tina

I think I love to garden. Or I would love it if I could devote the time to it that I'd like to.
We have a pretty big property (almost 2 acres) and most of it is lawn, with about an acre of grass. We have landscapers come weekly to do the lawn, but otherwise we mostly do stuff ourselves. I usually do a big annual garden out front, mostly because I love the color. If I have time and money I like to put some annuals along the front porch as well. I have a couple of young men who come now and again to help me with digging and moving plants. Mostly hostas, I have tons of those and am trying to move them along the perimeter of the grass.

We have a veggie garden as well, though it hasn't been very productive. This year I really want to think hard about what to put in it. Last year I had a bumper crop of watermelon, but it was some weird variety that tasted awful. Peppers don't seem to want to grow here. Tomatoes do well and I love growing little cherry ones. Whenever I think of veggie gardens I think of JudiGal's gardens! So impressive!

I feel like given a giant budget and a few garden helpers, this place could be glorious. For now, I'm happy to keep it fairly neat. Eventually I think the yard maintenance will be what drives us from this home, which is sad. We did all the lawn and the pool for the kids and it has been wonderful, however I will be sad to see it without wiffle bats and soccer balls everywhere.

Beth P.

I would garden all day if my schedule allowed. My children learned to prepare meals pretty early in life because if the weather was fine, Mommy was in the garden.

I enjoy all the things others have said: the planning, caring for the plants, moving things around when they 'might do better over there', etc.

And I also enjoy the visual reward. My yard doesn't look professionally landscaped by any means, but I've always got flowers blooming and it looks alive and fresh. Many of my neighbors' yards look exactly the same 365 days a year: evergreen shrubs, chemlawn grass. Can't tell if it's May or November. I don't know how they can stand it, not getting out there and digging in some flowers!

When I returned to working full time after being a SAHM for many years, the first thing I bought for my new office was plants--I felt like I was moving into a cage and I needed to bring some garden with me. Tending those little plants twice a week was a comfort and a joy.

I like to garden for the same reasons why I love decorating my house or knitting. I have this creative energy inside of me that stresses me out if I can't provide an outlet for it. I have this need for taking essentially nothing, and turning it into something; taking a ball of yarn and turning it into a beautiful scarf, taking a beat up, run down house and turning it into a beautiful home, taking a massive expanse of grass and turning it into a lovely garden.

My garden also provides me with an opportunity to teach my children about nature, such as why bees and worms aren't just gross and scary, but how they help make the garden beautiful.