Growing a gardener

When gardeners garden, it is not just plants that grow, 

but the gardeners themselves. 

- Ken Druse

How did you grow to become a gardener? What path did you take to the gardening world?  Have you known since you were a child that you wanted to have your own garden one day?  Did your parents or grandparents or another mentor instill in you a love for nature and gardening?  Is your interest primarily in the results or in the process?  Is it for the flowers, the food, or your soul? Or is it all of those?  

My path to gardening was a long, slow, and meandering one.  My parents didn’t garden.  The grandmother I knew spent most of her time indoors.  I wasn’t interested in studying science or botany.  But there was an aspect of my childhood that I believe influenced my later love for the garden - I spent most of my free time outdoors.

There were a lot of children in my neighborhood, and the streets and backyards were our playground.   We climbed trees, played games, rode our bicycles, and staged outdoor dramas under the apple trees. We hunted for pretty rocks in the creek bed and created a make believe world under the trees near the cow pasture.  We were given a great deal of freedom to roam, something it wouldn’t be safe to do today.

When I was a teenager my parents built a house on Lake Norman.  My first “gardening” experience may have been helping my father break up the red clay to plant grass. Living on the lake, we spent as much time as possible floating on the water or sitting on the porch.  But we also walked through the woods and picked blackberries by the side of the road.

As young marrieds my husband and I rented a little duplex, with it’s own small yard.  The yard was waist high in plantain weeds.  We worked hard at clearing those weeds and providing an outdoor space for our one-year-old daughter to play.  But the duplex, in Fairfax County, Va.,  had no air-conditioning.  It felt like a sauna that summer and we were happy to move to an apartment.   We added houseplants to the apartment and a planter to our little balcony but there was no plot of dirt to call our own.

A few years later we bought our first home. - an old home in need of remodeling with lots of land for gardening.   My husband knew about vegetable gardening - his parents planted a huge garden every summer.  My father-in-law brought us a load of chicken manure to enrich the sandy soil and we let that chicken manure sit through the first Winter.  The next Spring we put in our vegetable seeds and seedlings and then spent most of our gardening time hoeing out the Bermuda grass.  Our vegetable crop wasn’t very impressive and I wasn’t convinced that vegetable gardening was for me.  

Our next home was a second floor condominium - no gardening space in sight. 

But then one more move and we settled in - to a house we lived in and loved for 23 years. 

It had a tiny yard and was surrounded by giant willow oaks.  We dug and transplanted daffodils and planted azaleas. There were two dogwoods in the backyard and forsythia bloomed in the corner.   One summer we tried growing tomatoes - we had lots of foliage and not one single tomato.  It was in that back yard, under the dogwood, that we hung our first bird feeder, and there that we put the bluebird box on the fence.  

We survived Hurricanes Fran and Floyd with those willow oaks falling all around us.  

Hurricane Fran 1996

Hurricane Floyd 1999

Though the gardening possibilities were limited, we made great improvements with enthusiasm.

I wish I had a before shot of this view!

In 2003 we made one more move - to a house we love with a huge deck and lots of outdoor space. A house we hope to stay in for the rest of our lives.  I house with lots of room for gardening. But I'll save the story of this garden - the one you see in this blog - for another post.

For another gardening story, visit Marguerite at Canoe Corner. What's your story? If you post yours please leave a link in a comment - I would love to read it!