It's in the genes

Just to get the competition that I announced yesterday started. Although in the interest of fairness I won't be taking part in the Select Furnishings competition.

I’m not sure that anything actually inspired me or triggered my interest in gardening. As far as I can remember it has just always been there.

I guess my first real memory of a garden goes back to the age of four when I can remember playing with my cousin in our grandparents garden. We lived in a house without a garden at the time and to have the space and freedom to just wander around without an accompanying adult was exciting. Around the same time my grandma died and we went to live with my grandad. The garden became my playground. I was allocated a small patch of ground to tend myself where I raised easy to grow annuals such as Virginian and Night scented Stocks. I grew the same thing every year but it didn’t matter as the distance from one year’s sowing to the next was a lifetime to a young child. It fascinated me to think that seeds could magically turn into all sorts of wonderful plants and the fascination has never really faded. 

Dahlias and chrysanthemums were given lots of tender loving care and were interspersed with upturned pots of straw set to trap the earwigs that were public enemy number one and had to be avoided incase they strayed into some unsuspecting small girl's ear. Mixed in with the flowers were fruit and vegetables. There were large rhubarb leaves to hide under when it rained. Our dog used to like hiding under the leaves too - no doubt munching on a pea that she had stolen from a nearby plant. Then there were the tomato plants that my dad always considered so important that he checked whether any fruits had turned red before coming into the house when he arrived home from work. One day my sister and I tied ripe fruits onto a plant and I remember him coming in excited that at last his tomatoes had achieved ripeness. Our laughter gave the game away!

Then there were the bees - I loved the large furry bumble bees that my grandad would stroke as they browsed the flowers and the loopy caterpillars that magically changed into butterflies. For some reason the gardeners in the family just couldn’t learn to love them.

Gardening and love of nature was in my genes and as time went on the interest was fed and became stronger as I learned more fascinating facts.

Luckily I married someone who had a similar set of gardening genes so when we were looking for our first home the main criteria was that it had a garden that was large enough to enable us to grow all the things that we wanted to. We found an unloved garden which has gradually developed from that shown below to the one featuring in this blog. It's very different!

The problem was the list of things we wanted to grow outgrew the garden and so we ended up renting allotment space but that’s another story entirely and can be read about here

Now it's your turn. I hope lots of you 'have a go' as I'm looking forward to reading about what made you 'get into' gardening. I'm also looking forward to finding out who wins the prize.

Copyright: Original post from Our Plot at Green Lane Allotments http://glallotments.blogspot.co.uk/ author S Garrett