What age did you become a gardener?

I was 49 when I started gardening :-(. Our first home that we lived in had belonged to a lady that was in a gardening club and I think back now and would give anything to have some of the stuff from that house. Then I worked and there just wasn't time between kids, work, and so many other things going on. I planted geraniums and marigolds and impatience, things I could quick water and walk away from. I'm so happy I have gardening in my life now. I regret not starting early in my life but then I also realize there just wasn't time in my early years. Find DG has been a godsend for me as well as all you wonderful people! vic

With a name like Cedar, how could I not love plants (which leads to gardening, inevitably)?

I grew my first sunflower in the veggie garden at about age 3.From there...I was hooked.Mom has always been amazed at what I could grow...she's got a brown thumb!

I started veggie gardening about 23 years ago when I found myself 18 years old and married. We had just purchased a ranch and had no money. Then came the kids. So veggie gardening was a way to feed the troops. Now, I'm in a position that I have to rethink my gardening practices. Kids are growing up and going away, so I don't need to can so much. Now I'm branching off into flowers and heirlooms for seed saving purposes. Much more enjoyable.

I voted for the second one. There was some space all round our house with coconut, mango, jackfruit, guava, pomogranate, rose-apple and many flowering shrubs (flowers mainly for worship). so, when I was a child, my mother and my grandmother was watering the plants with a hose-pipe. They were just maintaining the plants without a serious gardening-mind. I used to join in that chore of digging and make the water flow from one plant to another. I think it was sometime when I was in high-school, I wanted to grow Cosmos from seed on my own. I think that was my first my first experience of watching the plant grow from seed and that enthusiasm has been maintained today even after nearly 3 decades. But I did start a (ornamental) garden about 15 or so years ago and this was without knowing the names of the plants or how to grow them!! A few years ago, I learnt some of the names of the plants from a book I borrowed from a library. And it was only after I bumped into DG that I got so many plants identified with their names. The real gardener in me emerged out only with the help of DG and the Web. I can proudly say that I'm a Gardener.

Like JoanJ, i started when i had a place of my own, but wasn't on my own, though my other half wasn't interested.
Should have been enthused as a child as my father was a brilliant gardener, but, although i enjoyed growing things then, can't say i was properly hooked until later.

Hello Everyone, I became a gardener once my mother passed away. I was 17 and our home where I had lived with my parents all of my life was starting to look not so much like the peaceful, joyful, place my mom always made it to be. My Dad was greiving so badly that he just didn't care. I had a little sister who was a 'STRAIGHT A' student and I wanted her to have a happy home and feel good there, and know she had someone who cared. So, that is when I learned to cook and garden. I brightened up the yard with lots of flowers and realized, hey I must have a knack for this. Everything lived and my Dad would always say that my begonia's were the most beautiful flowers he had ever seen. They grew to about
2 1/2 ft tall and they were red and white. Ever since then I have planted begonia's for him, even now there are some begonia's there. Since then,(1989) he has remarried and moved on, but those begonia's still come back, believe it or not, just ask Mollybee. That is my gardening story and I still am going strong today!!! It is also my therapy, then and now! It has been such a comfort to me!

Thanks,
Traci S

I don't think I ever planted a thing until I was out on my own. I don't recall noticing the plants at my grandma's house, yet my mom tells me she loved gardening and will name off the perennials she loved most. I mostly thought my mom was crazy for sweating out in the heat and bugs.

After Howie and I were married, I started keeping several windowboxes of impatiens and wax begonias on the porchrails at the apartment we rented; it was a big Victorian house which had been split into apartments, and ours opened onto the large front porch and encouraged leisurely afternoons and evenings on the swing. There were *loads* of hostas out front, but at the time I had no idea what they were, or anything else for that matter.

It wasn't until I started working at Bear Creek that I became interested in gardening. They're the umbrella company over Jackson & Perkins, so you can imagine how working with that catalog would pique one's interest! I'm relatively new to serious gardening, then - from around 1997 on. I was hooked and learned all I could, buying gardening books and reading them in between phone calls. I became the "plant lady" at the call center and enjoyed helping people with their plant questions. My employer sent me to the master gardener classes.

I've been a housewife since summer of 2000, but my love of gardening has stuck with me and I enjoy growing perennials and annuals around our house. We'd do more with veggies were it not for a lack of sunlight in our gardening spots.

Mon Jardin is located on the same land that, as a child,
I " gardened" with my grandfather. I hope that one day one of my grand children will garden here with his grandchildren.

I crawled out from under the cabbage leaf. I learned everything from grandma and grandpa, my parents hate gardening.
I even have a viburnum start in my yard that my great-grandma gave to my grandma and she gave me a start of it about 7 or 8yrs ago. The viburnum is now 12ft tall or so. It it just the common triloba but I wouldn't take anything for.

I grew my first sunflower when I was 5 :) Then I wanted soem more plants. My first ones were Aechmea, Guzmania, Saintpaulias (always got those from my grandma on my birthday), Muscari and Chlorophytum.

I voted for choice 2, Mother would be offended by the cabbage leaf and everyone knows I was found under the gooseberry bush anyway LOL. Curious that the gooseberry bush in our garden has never yielded a baby ;)

My Father was of the opinion that greenery and countyside were undeveloped areas that linked towns. Mom loves gardens but was busy being a working Mom so we had a tidy garden with some flowers but she never had time for a grand plan. Our nextdoor neighbours Mr and Mrs White were retired and had a big greenhouse where they grew tomatoes and Pelargoniums, as soon as I could lift a little black houseplant watering can when I was 4, I would trail after him 'helping' him out. I can still smell that greenhouse to this day.

My grandparents garden was half veg and half lawn and flowers. I would 'help' harvest and prepare the vegetables for cooking and deadhead some of the easier flowers, they were old fashioned country folk who believed children should have duties from a really early age and it was fun for me. As a treat Grandad would make the snapdragons talk to me and let my brothers and I pop the fuchsia buds on the huge bush they had, he always said it helped them to open properly. When I was 5/6 I had a small patch of garden to myself at home, I grew nasturtiums and other easy annuals with Mom's help. Even as a teenager living in a block of flats we had a balcony garden and each year I would sow or buy container plants and make hanging baskets. Lots of people said how lovely it looked.

So 25 years on from those initial tottering steps with a little black watering can or a bowl full of unshelled peas, I'm still out there pottering about with the plants and my interest is still there. I still feel new to it all and each season has its surprises.

I helped out in the vegetabel garden when I was small. I only harvested and weeded, though.
Once I moved out on my own, when I was 17 and married, I always had something growing either indoors or out. I couldn't imagine a spring going by without something being planted.
How do some people live without flowers? My sister never hardly goes out into the yard much less touches dirt. She does enjoy my flowers, though.
Windy

I wasn't born under a cabbage leaf, but I did have some cabbage patch dolls when i was little!

I was a child. Glads in my Dad's veggie garden were my first and I've been hooked ever since. I had a short period of apartment living as a young adult in which I became obsessed with houseplants then back to full gardening. My father still gardens.. We are even sharing my seedlings that are under lights this year so he can start a new bed. It's a bond we have shared for as long as I can remember. At home (the farm) we still go for walks thru the bush and look at all the great things God has planted there and try to figure out what they are. We can spend hours alone walking, talking looking at the plants or not... I wanna go home...... I'm kidding.. I just want summer so I can go visit and we can do it again :)

the home I am in now, I moved to in 1984, I just did house plants then...I had them everywhere. Then, I progressed to Annuals in pots on my porch. {Well, after hours of watering}. The neighbors kids learned to count past 65 on my porch counting my pots of plants! then. ONE DAY> I discovered going to a greenhouse to buy" big girl plants". WOW! what an eye opening day that was. You mean...you could plant things in the earth ...and they would come back???I NEVER heard of such a thing!! I had not one gardening bed at this home till that day. WELL>now, I hardly have any grass!! I try NEVER to miss opening day at my favorite greenhouse now!(usually April 15)

I'm a gardener? Well, I pretend now and again ;-)

One of my earliest memories is of trying to keep my baby sister (2 1/2 years my junior) from crawling into the garden and eating the soil! Have had one ever since. LOL

I have NEVER been able to do gardening....but, amazingly enough, I remember all my Mother's plants and flowers....and they were leigon...Hollyhock, Cosmos, Sweet Peas, and usually a rose cutting under an upside down fruit jar! Now, since my DH (who was a great gardener) died, and so many of you on DG have sent me seed....you are FORCING me to become a gardener! Thank you...I think!! LOL Today I even pruned some of the Mesquite that DH had trimmed before....want to keep them like he had them. I am also in the process of making a flower box out of an old wooden crate that rifles were shipped in...up on cinder blocks so I don't have to bend down! I'm going to need a LOT o help from all of you...I can see that now! Jo

We're here, Jo!

I voted a few days ago and don't remember which I checked. I was 3 when I became "pansy aware" and "deadheaded" all the pansies in my grandmother's patch and then moved on to all of the pansies in my Aunt Dode's patch. I did a lot of veggie garden weeding as a child - slave labor - and helped my mom move tons of flat creek rocks to build retaining walls and steps and a Japanese garden. When we moved into a trailer behind my in-laws house, I confiscated about 6 square feet of lawn for a tiny little pansy patch and planted tulip bulbs in a space where I was told NOTHING would ever grow - 30 years later, there is still one that comes up.

My real gardening odysee started 8 years ago when I acquired pieces of gardens from 5 or 6 generations of the family who had this farm before us. There are some amazingly old plants here and I am having a ball figuring them all out.

I think that my first tiny patch was a bit of defiance - this is my ground no matter who thinks they own it - and it has changed only in that I now know no one really owns it, we just borrow it for awhile.

I was always and gardner my maiden name is Gartner, or gardner. I started at 31/2 Grandma and Grandpa started me on to this. I weeded the succulent garden, this kept me out of their hair while they made Shirley Temple doll clothes for my 4th birthday. I think the year was 1936. I went to the Huntington Gardens that year, I have a snapshot of the Barrel Cactus going in, and i remember a Euphorbia going into a big hole with a wooden frame all around it. We had big saucer size Dalias, the rambling roses were along the fence, and I planted seeds from the fruit I ate purchased from the market. I also took cuttings of the fruit trees to plant. As I got older (about 9) the war had started and I was in charge of the victory garden at home and school. The rows were straight, and the veggie's tastful, we used Chicken, duck, rabbit, pigeon fertilizer, all natural. We even had a compost pit. No wonder everything tasted like food. Those were good memories that are crystal clear. Norma

Oh I'm enjoying reading this thread' My earliest memories were as a child in Oklahoma and gardening with the elders' They did everything possible to make every year better than the last' I remember picking tomatoes from vines that towered over my head while my aunt picked the fruit higher up and if I came up missing the'd find me pulling up onions eating them like apples,lol' I Still eat them like that too' But the most fun was riding the mules when we planted row crops trying to keep my straw hat on with the neverending winds gusting' We didn't do much with flowers,food was the most important then' And nothing was wasted especially our time,the word "bored" didn't exist,lol' They taught me to read the weather unlike today with radios and such and I now teach others as well. I hold these memories close as the elders have passed and realize how hard it was for them and how far we've come growing anything' We learned patience too very young' Our kids don't ask me anymore when they call"what's cookin',they ask me whatcha ya got growin",lol' Sis'

My Grandfather was a horticulturalist, he had a large farm devoted to Organic gardening techniques, and was a regular contributing writer to Rodale's Organic Gardening Magazine. My parents also lived on the farm and I was born there, under a Cabbage leaf, in 1966. I could ID seedlings by thier first true leaves before I knew my ABC's. But then we all moved on in different directions in 1977. When my grandfather died in 1997, I received all his journals and an almost complete collection of Rodale's OG magazines and books, the iron skillets, kitchen table, some canning jars, all of his personal coraspondance, and his saved seeds (some of which I have been able to grow plants from). A true treasure. Too bad I cann't seem to grasp Latin as well as he could, then maybe I could understand his journals better, he wrote them in very technical Latin terms and not just the plant names, most of it. I was able to successfully learn rose and fruit tree grafting from his journals, due to his ability to also draw great illustrations. He was a brilliant man.
P.S. I lived in a Condominium from 1984 till 1987, I had my Veggies growing in 5 gal. buckets on the patio,I couldn't afford proper pots, then I received a letter from the owners association instructing me to remove the unsightly things (I was a renter). I told my landlord and he went to bat for me before the owners council and between the 2 of us we started a petition among some of the other like-minded owners and had them designate a community gardening area. I'm proud to say that the community veggie garden is still there 18 years later, started by a homesick, 18 year old girl that liked "real" tomatoes.

This message was edited Saturday, Mar 16th 6:55 PM

MicheleN...That is a beautiful way to start your gardening career!! I think our Grandfathers had a big influence in our lives. Jo

I know I didn't come from a cabbage patch because my brothers were always refering to the rock I crawled out from under! So I guess I started gardening at the age of 3 when I tried to plant a pinto bean....in my nose! I still remember how horrid I felt about my dear mum harvesting it..

Well, the first few years of gardening for me were a sort of "involuntary servitude". You kids raised in the country know what I mean. As an adult, when I started gardening, it just came naturally, I guess. I'd rather be in the garden than anywhere else I can think of.

Zany....I think every family has a "gardener" like you...the old "bean up the nose" type!! My DS did that.

Ivey, I haven't met you, but I see you are in TN...Are you coming to the Round Up? I hope so...it might never be in TN again...or anywhere else for that matter...LOL Jo

My paternal great grandmother grew hundreds of roses. My maternal grandparents had a farm out west. My parents grew up not caring about doing the gardening work as they had their fair share in their youth.

Later in life my mother started growing peonies, dahlias and roses. When she passed away my father and I dug up one of her 40 year old peonies and I sawed it into 4 pieces to share with my sisters.

Ever since I was 20 I always had indoor plants and loved them. I bought my present house 20 some odd years ago with a back yard of weeds THREE FEET TALL. Slowly each year I added beds of annuals, perennials, shrubs, roses and many different types of bulbs. Finally after 3 years I gave up on the annuals and planted the entire back garden in perennials. Five years ago I put in a small formal pools and loved the tropical look with goldfish.

My oldest daughter has a green thumb, the middle one has a BLACK thumb except for cactii which even she can kill occassionaly. My son is interested at all! My grand daughter I started teaching gardening and sowing seeds when she was 2 years old and she loves her veggie and flower garden. The only thing now is she know various plants and tries to take home my unusual tropicals when she leaves.

Last year she had small pumpkins from her garden. We put them on the porch for Halloween, but every weekend when she went to her dad's she took them with her in her backpack...LOL. When she returned on Sunday morning she would put them back on the porch. When they became all mushy she cried and I assured her we would plant more this year.