What Attracted You To Gardening?

~ By Gardening Committee Members ~

For many of us who love Nature getting into gardening was and is a natural flow whose root rests within the various plants that exist within this realm but what causes one to feel the need to bring them up close and personal?

This past month we have been having great fun discussing just what "attracted us to gardening" in the first place, individually speaking and as you can see from the "cropped" comments below this need is expressed in a variety of ways.



Cheri ~ "I know when I first got into plants I lived in an apartment and had no patio space to speak of, so did my plants in pots scattered through my apartment. I used to have a fairly good "green" thumb, but somewhere along the years, I lost it :) As I was always broke, trying to raise children, I would get my plants as small cuttings, starts, from my friends and family mostly. I loved getting the starts as it just awed to me watch them grow and grow they did and bloom and flower so well... I wonder what happened to that green thumb..."


Julie ~ "I think it's in the blood. Some people love the beauty of flowers others just take them for granted. Never did I think I would eventually meet the man of my dreams and so from the first time we set up house together I wanted to get out into the backyard and see what I could do to make it a more inviting place in which to contemplate at the end of a hard day's work. So from that I think you got to be happy within yourself to be able to appreciate the beauty around you. I didn't know one petal from the next. All I knew was roses. So I thought its better to start with those first and go from there as I knew they were pretty hardy plants and with being at work all day I could be pretty sure they'd survive. Well imagine my surprise when I first discovered the rose bushes I had planted along the fence had new little stems growing from the main one. I was just so tickled pink and rushed to tell hubby that I was a gardener!...lol..."


Kythera Ann ~ "Well, my first association with "gardening" was from home. It translated in my mind to weeding endless dandelions out of a lawn. One needs to understand that I have always "loved" nature, and love to be surrounded by it. But when I grew up, "gardening" equated to the yards in subdivisions in San Francisco, which was all I saw, and that did not impress me as anything but work. I fell in love with what gardens could look like when I went to Butchart Gardens in Victoria, British Columbia when I was 16 and of course I always enjoyed the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. My first home was a townhouse in the city. Way too much cement and asphalt for this girl. I had a tiny patio so I built shelves on the fences and filled them with all sorts of flowering potted plants. My criterion was that they needed to be pretty, needed to be cheap, won't care if I forget to water them and do not require replanting, pruning or any other 'regular' maintenance..."


Sassy ~ "The attracting thing for me in gardening was always preparing the soil for planting. I always love to see what I have done, when the plants mature and are growing, how many are nice and green with foliage and the blooming ones with all the colors. Back in time, my flower beds would take up a lot of my time just making the different sizes and working the soil. I love being outside working in the sunshine as I was more an out door person. Over the years time has caught up with me and I don't get out doing those things now. So I try to do my planting on the front porch and on the patio, in hanging pots or baskets. I also have some planters and pots setting on tables and stands that look as if they were stairs. I also set pots in different arrangements along my drive way and in my azalea bed for filling in..."


Lady Kat ~ "What attracted me was the idea of embellishing my front and backyards with bursts of color and fragrance. To attract birds and butterflies and even hummingbirds! I started out with small gardens filled with annuals... after 17 years I figured if I'm going shell out this kind of money I should start investing in hardy perennials. So about 4 years ago, we redid the front and back yards with new beds and started buying perennials. Now I have at least 15 Hostas, flowering shrubs numerous other perennials and last summer I finally found a Yucca Filamentosa! It has a place of honor in the front yard!"


Gardnbee ~ "For my part plants have been as much a part of my life as breathing in and breathing out but I never started moving/working with them on a personal level until years and years later as I grew into an adult. Funny now that I am putting this to paper so to speak how for most of my life I observed what was observing me...lol"

         

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