How did you get interested in plants?

I am interested to find out how people got started gardening. I used to have quite the black thumb, occasionally buying a plant that looked interesting, then promptly killing it. But a couple of years ago I took a trip to Ecuador. Ecuador's rainforest is naturally home to many plants that are house plants here! I specifically remember seeing a peace lily, orchids, and palms. Not only was I visiting Ecuador, but I was there as a part of a biology class studying rainforest ecology. So once I saw how house plants grow in the wild, I thought that it would be easy to mimic that at home. Ever since then I've had quite the green thumb! Now our house is full of plants and I'm starting to propagate them. I've even replaced the plastic plants in my fish tank with live ones. Hopefully this year I'm going to "graduate" to gardening outside...

I'd like to hear other people's stories, too! --Dana

My nandad had 2 or 3 allotments as well as his garden, which was split into veg and flower area (for my nan), he grew all their veg and probably a lot more besides. Our next door neighbour when I was a toddler had a greenhouse full of tomatoes and Pelargoniums (I can still smell those two growing together) and my mother fitted in a little gardening between working full time and looking after the family. I spent a lot of time between the 3 houses, pottering after one or t'other carrying, holding or watering something, generally 'helping out'. Mother let me have a little patch to grow things like Nasturtiums and Pansies in when I reached about 7.

When I was 9 we moved to here we didn't have a garden but we'd walk the country lanes and mother would tell me the wildflowers in the hedgerows and forest. When we moved somewhere permanent, I had a couple of houseplants of my own, one Celosia and a Cactus, the Celosia was an annual (which I didn't understand at the time and thought I'd killed it) but the cactus lived for years. We did have a balcony and again my Mother tried to fit that into a very busy schedule, we also had hosueplants my brother and I used to look after. When I was 14, a Garden Centre opened within walking distance, I was also doing a couple of jobs after school at the time, any spare cash I had I'd walk the couple of miles up hill to the GC and pick up some bedding, seeds and general clearance plants and carry them all the way home to plant up. Once again we were fortunate enough to have gardening neigbours so our combined planting schemes always had the street commenting on the colours during summer.

Even a busy college, work and home life didn't stop me, I still spent any spare few pennies on seeds or plants to put in tubs outside the door. One of our landlords gave us a glowing reference because his garden looked much better after 3 students lived in the house LOL.

I can't really garden here, couldn't in my last place either but once again Mother allows me to do the garden and plant what I want. I'll never be a great veg grower like my nandad or Mr White, but I can't remember a time where plants didn't feature somewhere in my life.

I get my love of gardening from my dad. In my early years we where tenants on a dairy farm my dad milked and helped with the crops and always raised a vegetable garden that we pretty much lived on. My mom would can everything. I grew up helping in the tobacco patch and veggie garden. Then when things changed we moved to live in town. Our first and only home that was really ours. My dad still raised a huge garden at his brothers or finally in a lot across the street from us. So I learned how to can and do all that from my mom. We never let anything go to waste. Later when we were older Dad started getting into flowers. Roses where his first attempt at flowers. He lined the drive way with them. They where beautiful for a couple of years. But then we had a bad winter and none came back. He moved on to other flowers and daylilies. The yard was always beautiful. Even when I got married I still canned things from his veggie garden. He moved allot of his plants to my new house and showed me how to do them. From that time on I was hooked.When my dad passed away my mom wanted no part of the flowers so most of them now have a place in my yard.I got out of gardening some when my children where little. I just kinda let things go as they where. A few years ago I really got back into it since my kids are pretty much grown up I had more time. I owe it all to my Dad. I just wish he was here to see some of the great things I grow now. (I want to add that now my mom has got into gardening and loving it. So lots of those plants have found there way back home.)

I grew my first pot plant when I was 12.
after that all passed (8 years and 50lbs later) I was interested in any herb-type plant, be it for healing, seasoning, or whatever.
course than I got hooked on nearly any plant I found interesting.

least I'm honest.
drew

We razed our entire lot and put in retainer planters. I realized I knew nothing about gardening; took the Master Gardener class and through that found Dave's. My greatest education has been Daves and especially the helpfulness of Brugie. She knows it all! She is my most respected mentor.

This message was edited Apr 3, 2004 6:40 PM

My grandmother..
She put plants in anything that would hold dirt..And I mean anything, lol...She could root and grow a dead stick..She was a great lover of all plants and especially the wild things we used to gather every time we went fishing, which was at least 1-2 times weekly.. She got so many plants from the river and creek areas...I also have this love.. She's been gone 10 years now, but I have so many of her plants here on our farm..I cherish each one. I miss that lady daily..

larkie

My dad...he could grow anything. He could cut the bloom off a rose, stick it in the ground, and it would root. I've seen Mystic's garden and it's absolutely beautiful!

my mom
we had an acre veggie garden every year and our rows to hoe.I hated it! But i always had my own veggie garden when I moved out!
Then mom made a rose garden that expanded into a flower garden and she was adding on all the time till she got sick and died in 1988!
When my dad died in 1993 my sisters and I dug up some of moms flowers and I had to have a spot to put them so there was my first "flower" garden and Ive been adding ever since!
my grandma(moms mom)gardened till she was 93-i guess its in the blood! :)

My grandma for flowers and grandpa for veggies. They lived in town and really grew a lot of stuff when I was a kid and that is how I got started with gardening. I lived with them more than at home.

I grew up watching mom and her houseplants. I loved the ferns, spiders, philidendrons, and aloe she had. Her mom (grandma) always had lots of plants too. Grandpa also did a lot of outside gardening. I guess it just rubbed off on me having to have something here. Although when I was married my ex-husband hated all that and we never were able to have any. So now I'm making up for it.

My mother and dad always had beautiful flower gardens every year in NC. They only grew annuals, so the first planting in the spring was a big event. I never took part, always had my nose in a book.

After my father died, my mother came to live with me in FL. To make her happy we built a deck and I helped her plant her flowers that she loved so much. After she passed away I just let the flowers die and had palms in pots to fill in the deck. BUT.......her Impatiences blew seeds into the palm pots and they lived on.

When I moved here, I brought the palms with me (with the Impatience) and they STILL lived on. I felt like my mother was telling me something, so I went and bought Impatience and Coleus (her favorites) for my self. She was so right!! Now I can't imagine life without my plants. I may not be the most experienced gardner on DG, but I'm probably the happiest.
Pati

I grew up in a house right on the banks of Lake Erie. Our next door neighbor had a flower garden which bordered our yard as well as hers. My swing set was just a few feet away from her garden. She grew many flowers, but it was the tall pink phlox that I loved. I watched her working in her yard and I wanted a garden just like hers when I grew up. Tall phlox is one of my three favorite flowers. I have had it in my gardens everywhere I have lived as an adult.

My Mom. She was a gardener in and out, and had no fingers, only green thumbs! She snagged me by letting me have my own little garden full of a mish-mash of stuff, and I have loved gardening ever since!

My grandma always had a vegetable garden, and like Mystic described, she canned anything and everything. My mom (her daughter-in-law) has a naturally green thumb. I was four when we bought a 40-some acre farm, and of course we had a big veggie garden. I can't say I spent a lot of time in either woman's garden, but I suspect that's where my hankering to grow things began.

When DH and I were married, one of the first springtime things I did was to buy two hanging baskets, some soil and a six-pack of petunias for our apartment balcony. I knew nothing about plant or soil selection, so I wound up with incredibly heavy pots of nasty mucky soil, and the plants quickly died.

Tried again a couple years later, with two homemade wood planter boxes. Bought marigolds and celosias for a shady porch. More nasty heavy "garden soil" (because it was CHEAP!) and promptly killed those poor plants. I did manage to have small vegetable garden that year, and our elderly neighbor LOVED my lettuce and tomatoes, which was good because I was busy caring for a newborn.

The next year brought us to our first house (rented) and I gardened while our baby (now a high school senior) and the dog lounged in the shade. The veggie garden did okay, despite our neighbor's habit of draining his pool right on the garden.

A couple years after that we finally bought our own home, and I decided I could grow things from seeds, and took the plunge. Bought cell packs from a local store, ordered seeds from Park's and used my son's deep window seats for my baby seedlings.

A LOT of trial and error later, I'm still trying to get my thumb to be a pale imitation of my mom and grandma's ;o)

DD loves to help me garden (except for weeding), so I suspect she might have a naturally green-thumb, as opposed to my "cultivated" one.

My grandpa was a gardener. I lived with my grandparents when I was little so I got to be grandpa's helper. He gave me a little patch and helped me plant a few things in "my" garden. I remember playing peek-a-boo with him among the pole beans and peas climbing on white string he saved all year from the wrappers on meat from the market, helping pick and shell peas, helping pick raspberries and loganberries. The lawn was mowed with a push type reel mower, the clippings were composted and dug by hand into the vegie garden and flower beds. Somehow I don't remember weeding. I often think I would love to show Grandpa my yard and vegie garden, he would like them I think.

Was mine a love-hate relationship? lol! My parents planted a garden one year, and that was it - then made me the sole "weeder" and I hated that.

Somehow I forgot about all that because I just love flowers and growing my own tomatoes, herbs and cukes. I like to can salsa & pickles, and prefer homegrown (can't imagine growing store bought and canning them - I mean, why bother?)

I like to design, dream, plan, cultivate and see what I have created happen. It is something in my soul I guess.

I think God gave me the desire to garden. Not anyone else. And I'm very glad that he did. I have thought about going back to school and getting a degree in botany & a minor in horticulture. If I could afford to do this, I'd be there in a heartbeat. It seems to be my niche.

I would guess my love of growing things came about when we lived in White Rock, B.C., Canada. My sense of smell is really how it began, with a major Honeysuckle vine draped over the entrance arbor. That delicious fragrance of that plant has been with me ever since. Growing the old garden roses, with the thorns and all, has been a passion of mine now for, going on, twenty-eight years! As a little girl, roses didn't have much going for them,..so I thought. No real fragrance, covered in thorns which hurt, when you touched them......The love of tropicals came into play, as I have this desire to make something bloom, through nourishing. Earth Mother, is what our friends, call me, as well as "Ramblin' Rose"....Elaine

Karrie, that is a great goal, you should go for it. You could start with a night class or two, it might take a few years but you would be working toward the goal. If you could take the classes in the winter it might help alleviate those winter blues. Besides, you can't visit any nurserys then to spend money on plants.

True, Mary! Sitting around "thinking" about it isn't going to help, that is for sure!

Hmm...I think mine must be a born with it thing. It's definitely in my extended family, but not the parents for sure! lol I had to fight my mom to let me play in the yard. Some of my first memories from childhood are of climbing trees and playing in the dirt looking for worms. I tried and tried to garden for years totally ignoring the sun/shade requirements of things, just putting them where I wanted them. Once I got that figured out and that the dirt was the most important thing, I was off and running! I got my first houseplants at age 8, and one of them is still with me. My first plant 'trade' (I didn't give her anything) was from the lady that lives across the street from my mom. I got my creeping phlox from her when I was about 15 and I still have some that I brought to my home.

I can't recall how I got interested in plants. I do remember living with my grandmother in Central Mexico until I was about 7 or 8 years old. We had no running water or electricity. We lived on the side of a hill out in the country and the water source was downhill along a dry riverbed. This was where the water was collected/scooped from. It was kind of like a well. We didn't have much then but boy did we have plants. To this day I can't identify some of what Grandmother had. When I was 8 years old I hated the plants because we used to have to haul the water in buckets up-hill. It was a real pain. I remember the huge figs, sweet lime trees, guava trees, pitayas, tropical tasting prickly pears, bananas, palmagranades, mangos and avocados. The fruit was awesome but watering them was a drag. I clearly remember the cannas and ferns too. Though I hated watering these plants, my interest was aroused even then. As I got older and then finally living in the US I just started planting things and watching them grow (or die in a lot of cases since I was still learning).

Then my love of insects came along. As you all know, some insects feed exclusively off of certain plants so one hobby encourages the other. This lead to exploring more types of plants, including passionflowers (which now I'm hooked on).

I got my love for gardening from my mom...as a little girl i remember watching and helping her plant flowers and vegeatables...i also learned alot from my grandfather, my moms father...he always had huge veggie gardens on cape cod...i used to love walking and helping him pick all the tomatoes and peppers and summer squash....it would be just he and i when we would go visit....it was OUR TIME TOGETHER....i have such wonderful memories of those days....

My mom and i always gardened together at the house....then when carl and i bought our first house in long island, i was always calling mom, saying how do you do this, how do you do that....now, that we are living in florida, its a whole new world and im learning as i go along....i miss the gardening with my mom, but the knowlege and love for the soil and plants will always be in my heart as my MOM WILL ALWAYS BE....NO MATTER HOW MANY MILES MAY SEPARATE US, IT CANNOT SEPARATE THE LOVE THAT I HAVE FOR HER....do i sound homesick???? lol...

well, thats how i got my start in gardening.....

luv yas all
cindy

I got my "tolerance" for gardending from folks like Mystic and Horseshoe. I found DG and thought it was a neat, fun place to be....Then these folks started sending me plants and seeds! What was a girl to do but plant the darn things??

Now they have me into BRUGS......at the moment I have 6 living...4 in pots and 2 in water!! And they call me THE BRUG KILLER!! I think it is time to recind that name.

Jo, the Brug killer (reformed)