How Did You Get Your Start in Gardening?

I thought this would be a good start-of-the-year topic.

My dad was an avid gardener and home "landscaper" all my life. We lived on a steep hilly lot and he terraced some of it for his veggie gardens. I remember we always had Sweet Williams, Lily of the Valley, Tulips, and Tiger Lilies among others. We had strawberries, raspberries, rhubarb, and a big honkin' blackberry bush right outside the kitchen door! We had to walk up through the woods about half a mile to get to the high bush blueberries, but it was worth it!

My maternal grandma lived next door, and always had flowers. I remember the wild sweet peas climbing up an old bed frame in her back yard, the bamboo patch where we built "forts", and the huge white and purple lilac bushes beside the outhouse. (They didn't opt for indoor plumbing until the mid-60's!)

I was never interested in gardening until after I was married (about 17 years ago). That's when the addiction started to take root - and I haven't looked back since!

For me it was totally unexpected. My mom always had houseplants in the apartment and although I appreciated it, I was never very interested. When we moved in '96, I was expecting to just take care of the lawn and possibly plants some tomatoes and basil, as any self-respecting Italian would.

I decided to try some bulbs that first Fall. I was very impressed with them the following spring and it just took off like a rocket from there. That spring I started hitting the local nurseries and 'went at it'. Still didn't know much and was very busy with work and the house to do much research, so I did make lots of mistakes. Steadily I learned much more and starting using the web, which was still pretty new, to research and purchase.

By '99 I was a certified fanatic.

What does that make you now, in '08?

Nine years older.

I see you haven't lost your touch!

Hee hee. Thanks. Haven't lost any of the gardening interest either. Just dealing with some realities like limited space and some physical limitation - mainly from my back.

I have always been interested in plants but as a child was not permitted to have any. I had to wait until I left home to do that. Had to start with potted plants while I was renting and then when we were able to purchase several acres. My first flower bed was probably 8'x8' and I thought that was huge........ for a few months. It has been in a constant state of change since then and nibbles more ground all of the time. It is like one of those bad science fiction movies where the planet is overrun by aliens (insert the theme from Jaws)........ but I am having a grand time!

For me it was Bonsai, I was just fascinated by those little trees I saw in a dept store! - I still am, 25yrs later. I have to stop myself from making more of them, or else I would have a garden full of tables with little trees. So I garden in the yard to help alleviate the urge. Admittedly I weaken every now and then and start another... a transgression which I enjoy immensely. ☺

Cool, WC. Didn't know you were into that. Please start a thread about it one of these days. Have you done it with any Japanese Maples? If so, please show the photos!

Thanks VG, I've got a red one established for 7yrs now and another in a training pot 3 yrs now, I want to train it "root over rock" for next year (takes 2 yrs to establish). Another Red Dwarf is ordered for next year from the west coast. I'm considering an Acer grouping but I want to finish the pine grouping I started this year first - Terrible habit...

I grew up out in the country where my parents would always have gardens. I had my own garden area starting when I was 12 or so. since then I would have pots of annuals from time to time until we bought our house here and I could do more permanent gardening.


Seems like a lifetime ago - June 8

I like your house Al, including the color. What is that tree out front? Can't make it out.

Hmmm I have to owe my gardening skills to my mom. She is the best! She has shown me what love and nuturing can do. Not only do I do that in practice with my kids but having my own home now has inspired me as well. There are some things now I can grow that my mom cannot seem to grow in her gardens...I laugh to myself! LOL

Ditto Al... nice house!

Thanks

That's a Thornless Cockspur Hawthorn, it's a nice tree.

Hmmm...my story is a sad story turned happy story...lol...go figure. Growing up we had no houseplants, all the walls were white, carpet was beige, had a family dog, and lawn. My parents didn't want a garden, it was to much this, or to much that, it was just to much.
My family moved from Scranton, Pa to Blakely, Pa in my 8th going to 9th grade years of school...it was the same...again...white walls, beige carpeting, one dog, no garden, just lawn. The shrub row, and tree line, one on the side of the property, and the other on the back property line, were all removed...the two giant oaks next to the home, removed...they were taller than the home...too many leaves, too many birds, to much of to much.
I graduated, went into the military, moved home...this is when the bug bit me.
My parents 30th wedding anniversary...my mother always like dusty millers and marigolds, all in rows...so I took the hint.
They went away for the weekend...I rented a sod cutter...
I made a rock bed on the side of their property, with lavender, and other "hot" loving herbs. I planted hostas, heucharas, tiarellas, and other shade loving plants under the awning around the front porch. The dogwood tree that they kept in their front yard, I dug a 3' radius around, and planted 8 different types of hoasta (I found Shady Oakes). I dug an island to the right of their home, dead smack in the middle of the yard, planted over 12 different types of daylilies, hen and chicks, crocomisia, periwinkle, and columbine...also, behind a piece of illegally begotten drift wood (which measured a measely 10'x3') a weeping cherry. Then I went, with sod cutter, up the side of their property, to create a path that is about 30'x6', and planted anything that I could possibly think of. In the corner of their deck, I planted more hosta, daylilies, a creeping hydrangea, and a honeysuckle vine.
All of this, in 4 days. I used about 8 pick up truck fulls of topsoil, hummus, and mulch.
When they arrived home...they didn't know what to say.
I said, "Happy Anniversary"
They cried, we hugged, and they still have the beds, and smile with pride when someone pays them a compliment on their gardens.

So, out of the sterility of all white walls, all beige carpeting, and never being able to plant anything, my parents, unknowingly created, HemHostaHolic...lol.

Very nice story Tom! It's great to read how everyone got into gardening. I was a farm girl but never really paid much attention to growing things. I just took it for granted that I was totally surrounded by fields of corn, wheat, soybeans, hay, vegetable gardens and flowers inside and out!! When I moved away from home I missed them. I would have a few containers of annuals for the summer and did have a few perennials in a garden mostly for curb appeal. Then I met you guys..... and the rest is history. I'm taking over any available space I can find - even if it's a poison ivy patch. Just can't touch existing lawn unless the grass dies!! Eleanor
(you can take a girl off the farm, but you can't take farming out of the girl)

I had to grow something in 2nd or 3rd grade. I grew an avacardo plant. That is my first memory.

My Grandmother had a veggie and flower bed in the city and at camp. I loved to help her but it faded when I got to be a teenager. Now Dad was a smart man, he always grew a garden and I always helped. To get me back into helping him and Gram with the gardens he told me I could get a great tan on the back of my legs and back if I helped weed and plant. It made sense, and to his amusement, it worked.
When I married my 1st husband I didn't have a place to grow anything and I forgot how much enjoyment it could bring. The second time around I married a country boy and gardening was not a problem, been at it ever since.

Are you still into the half-tan thing??

Beautiful bonsai Watercan! Where can I see more of your little trees?

Thanks tetleytuna, click on my name and you'll see some of the finished ones, (and a black pine that looks like its being tortured) - it's one of my ongoing projects, I have 17 in total if you don’t count the groupings which are under construction - I hate to show the unfinished ones (but then again they never are finished are they?)... some others I have are of the same type of tree so I only show one or two... - it's an addictive hobby ☺

* Everyone here is talented, Victor with his Jap Maples, pirl with her awesome 'farm' & multiple gardens; Al, Boojum and Pixie with their pics, etc, etc... It's all good ☺

Lovely little garden, W.C.!
Your last comment reminds me of the movie Bruce Almighty, where he and "god" both say "good!"

I assume you mean under your images, WC? Do you have a photo history of one from start to now? Do you leave them all outside unprotected?

Please excuse this Texan for invading on your forum but I'd like to chime in an answer!

Al: love your home---I love a well manicured lawn and landscape like that, so beautifully well done!

Growing up my parents attemped to have veg gardens but we had woods behind us so it was quite shady, the best we could hope for were tomatoes and green beans. I only recall having a veg garden a couple years.

No one ever really bothered to "landscape" just took the yard as Grandma had it done over the years, mature trees, one old rosebush that bloomed so well, a snowball bush and some lilacs. Loved the self-maintaining rubarb on the side of the house!

No interest in plants until an adult and in my own house and realized the value of a nice landscape. Now I always have more nursery bought plants in pots than I have time to get into the ground.

Hoping to someday, when kids aren't babies, to be a "real" gardener. :)

Welcome Tir! All are welcome here. Take the kids into the garden with you. I did!

Me too..cheap labor! LOL Actually I put them in charge of pumpkins and sunflowers and they loved it. Nothing tickles a kid more than to grow a flower taller than them or their parents!

So what'd you do with them when they aren't walking on their own yet. LOL. DD loves to dig in the dirt. And she thinks picking up sweetgum balls from the sweetgum tree is fun. She likes to put them in the trash for me. :) Early training.

Oooh, you need to get one of those baby swings and bring it outside or wait for a few more years! LOL

Put them in one of those garden trugs. Worked for me!

Yes VG, under the images (sre☺).
Since I've been at this hobby before The Internet and Digital Cameras I never thought to document one from start to 'finish' - I'm too impulsive, indecisive and disorganized for that, (My good qualities Hee Hee!). In fact sometimes I change them 'midstream'! They are never finished since without pruning and occasional wiring they revert back to the way nature intended them to be. The 'finished' bonsai form exists only as long as the maker or someone else in turn, is there to maintain it, although it can always be redefined after long lapses.

I have a table, (soon to be two, much to my DW's chagrin- which I totally understand) on which I keep them in spring/summer/fall and an indoor unheated area which recieves plenty of ID light, where I over-winter them & I also use my garage. Believe it or not I've lugged some of them from NY - Fla - CA. and back again when my job relocated me for extended periods. - A "take your garden with you kind of thing"! Happily I'm in a position now where I'm much more stable and here (NY) to stay! ☺

I've only one, a Ficus, which I keep indoors (warm), to over winter, it's sensitive under 40° - it has sentimental value since it's one of my first, (an easy one), and my DW likes it in the kitchen when its not outside on spring/summer break. I find the indoor ones generally much too hard to keep up North unless they are of the Ficus variety which don't need much sun & humidity.

I don’t show them much since I feel like an artist with an unfinished painting. I've been told by many that I am much too overly critical of my work but I believe you have to be in this hobby, which demands so much attention to detail...it "comes with the territory".☺

Victor, if you were asking me about the half tan thing...no way...lol. Every room in my home, a different color scheme, no white walls, no beige carpeting...hardwood floors all the way, except in one room. Houseplant, almost every windowsill...lawn...about 50%gone...I'm working on that...lol.
My parents, by the way, have painted all the walls in their home, have gotten rid of the all beige carpeting, and placed different colored carpeting in different rooms in their home...have actually painted the ceilings in some of their rooms at their house (I can't express how difficult it was for my mom to encourage my father that colored ceilings were a good thing!)
The only thing they have very few of, is houseplants...I found out, after several botched attempts, that my mother, could kill silk....lol.
I love all of the gardening stories!!!....Keep 'em coming!

I think he was referring to my vain teenage years with the half tan. And no Victor, I do full tan thank you!

Funny Thom! But I was referring to Celeste. Thom - of course your parents have seen the light now, right? After you're gone! Lots of people are 'stuck in neutral' when it comes to paint colors.

Tir, one thing I did was garden while the kids were napping - just took the monitor outside with me!