Garden inspirationÌý permalink
Where did you learn your gardening ??
This discussion has been closed.
-
Message 1.Ìý
Posted by thedogcody (U14659366) on Monday, 13th June 2011
I realise that in the internet age a persons way of obtaining information is completely different from when I stared gardening 45 years ago when my mother asked me to dig a bean trench- from then I was slowly drawn in through window boxes, little patches at the back of our first flat, through to a bigger house with a garden to where I am now with a garden and greenhouse.
My first book was " Percy's Thrower's Encylopedia of Gardening" which I still have- but hardly look at now- and over the years have picked up other books and through various TV programmes , my own trials and errors and loads of advice from others have now got what I would like to think is a reasonable knowledge.
How have others become involved in gardening and what would you suggest for the complete novice to do in the "modern world"- I still say get a decent book!
Geoff
-
Message 2
Posted by figrat (U3054696) on Monday, 13th June 2011
Nothing better than a good gardening book!
I'm still buying them, but my first was 'The Gardening Year' published by the Reader's Digest which my father gave me in 1984!
I still look at it sometimes, it recommends a chemical for everything... -
Message 3
Posted by Twiggy (U3854938) on Monday, 13th June 2011
Many years ago, after my father had a stroke, he got me involved with gardening! Case of necessity but I found I loved it. Hours spent in the greenhouse tending the tomatoes and cucumbers and potting up all the plants. So relaxing. There was an odd time when he continually sent off for lilies! Did begin to wonder whether he was growing his own wreath!
Never read any books and am a 'hit and miss' gardener but still love being out there lost in my thoughts and away from everyone else. I think I have had to learn by my mistakes, which can be costly, but that's what suits me. -
Message 4
Posted by Twiggy (U3854938) on Monday, 13th June 2011
Meant to add that if there is anything I want to know, I ask the experts. Can't beat the posters on these boards!
-
Message 5
Posted by nooj (U13729031) on Monday, 13th June 2011
I don't know how old you are when your first childhood memory is formed, but I remember my dad taking me out into the garden at night time and telling me to smell the night scented stocks.
Magic, on both counts - being in the garden in the dark, and thescent. -
Message 6
Posted by northwards (U14324094) on Monday, 13th June 2011
I was born in the heart of the big city and scarcely saw anything green until I was in my 20's. Then I saw Geoff Hamilton on Gardener's World and I was hooked. I used to read the David Hessayon Expert books on my way to work on the London Underground, and I also liked the Reader's Digest books
It was a good way to learn - get the outlines from a good television programme, and then fill in the gaps with books and magazines -
Message 7
Posted by figrat (U3054696) on Monday, 13th June 2011
I don't know how old you are when your first childhood memory is formed, but I remember my dad taking me out into the garden at night time and telling me to smell the night scented stocks.
Magic, on both counts - being in the garden in the dark, and thescent.Ìý I had a very itinerant childhood (forces family) but one of my abiding memories is broadcasting flower seeds with my mother from a train onto railway embankments. No idea where we were going, or even if any of them germinated, but every time I am on a Uk train, and I see flowers growing alongside the track, I wonder if we might have had something to do with that. -
Message 8
Posted by everhopeful (U11289037) on Monday, 13th June 2011
my interest in gardening started about 50yrs ago but almost finished at the same time.I shudder to think what cld have happened. We had our first house at the age of 23 and a toddler and new baby. It was raining very gentle rain and I thought it wld be a good time to sow seeds in a veg patch. I left the toddler watching me thru the window and the baby asleep in the pram in the kitchen.
My little one started knocking on the window and he was crying, and as much as i wanted to carry on with the seeds, I had to go in. I was greeted by smoke and flames in the kitchen. It was obvious that the little one had pulled out the gas lighter and dropped it into a shopping basket which was on top of a plastic coated veg stand. The basket was no more and the veg stand was on fire.
I put the pram outside immediately and run thru to the other room for my little one then threw out the veg stand. that was it it was just smoke left.
I never ever left them unattended again but will never forget the incident.
I did continue gardening and have lived in many houses since then and always gardened. The Hessayon books were what I used and still have them
Nowadays it so easy to learn from TV and lots of good books. -
Message 9
Posted by Tee Gee (U10012255) on Monday, 13th June 2011
My mother grew dahlias and I loved them.
On getting our first house in 1969 I had the oppotunity to grow them for myself.
Then I joined the Dahlia Socy which I am still a member of to this day.
This led to exhibiting alongside the veg growers so then I got into veg growing & showing
The first thing you learn when exhibiting is to keep notes or a diary.
I have all my diaries dating back to 1987.
Ten years ago I built my website which is a compilation of my diary entries. So all the data is tried and tested!
I am currently updating my website and I will be interested to see when I study my diaries for the last ten years if the data has changed what with global warming / climate change, organic growing,banned chemicals etc.
I have also published a couple of books based on my diaries ( these can be reviewed on the home page of my website.)
I think things are a lot faster today because I can enquire to others on the internet when I am experimenting with something, whereas in the past, if it didn't work I had to wait another year to try something different.
So the younger generation don't know how lucky they are to have such facilities. -
Message 10
Posted by dirtyrob (U14395261) on Monday, 13th June 2011
I became interested before i even knew it!
My mum would take me down to Pembroke to see my grand parents (mums parents) when i was a young boy. Two weeks summer holidays were just fantastic. Fred (grand dad) was an awesome veg gardener, with an even better veg garden. I always remember sitting on the back step shelling peas and broad beans, washing carrots, learning how to gently scrub new potatoes etc.
My mum, grand dad, my great grand dad all grew their own, mum still does. So i'm not surprised, as i take after my mum and Fred in my personality that i am a natural when it comes to growing fruit and veg
I've never bought a gardening book. My mum was given a gardening book as a xmas present back in 1987. I now have the book, it also makes a good little stand for my laptop when i'm sitting on the settee.
The book is called The Gardening Year, it's got just over 600 pages and as the book title suggests, it tackles the whole year on what you need to be doing. It puts books by TV gardeners like Carol Klein and Alan Titchmarsh to shame. -
Message 11
Posted by figrat (U3054696) on Monday, 13th June 2011
Nothing better than a good gardening book!
I'm still buying them, but my first was 'The Gardening Year' published by the Reader's Digest which my father gave me in 1984!
I still look at it sometimes, it recommends a chemical for everything...
Ìý Is it this one? -
Message 12
Posted by Papa Nopsis (U14479902) on Monday, 13th June 2011
I have never read a gardening book, but late mother used to enjoy watching Geoff Hamilton with me as she grew old. She got lots of useful ideas from the gardening progs, as we all do even now.
Wiki is wonderful! I can check the Kingdoms, do the classifications and so forth from top to bottom! -
Message 13
Posted by dirtyrob (U14395261) on Monday, 13th June 2011
Nothing better than a good gardening book!
I'm still buying them, but my first was 'The Gardening Year' published by the Reader's Digest which my father gave me in 1984!
I still look at it sometimes, it recommends a chemical for everything...
Ìý Is it this one?Ìý
Figrat, i've checked my `The Gardening Year book', it was first published in 1985, this edition printed in 1987 for W.H.Smith. Also says it's material previously appeared in `Green Fingers'. No mention of Readers Digest. -
Message 14
Posted by dirtyrob (U14395261) on Monday, 13th June 2011
It took me a while, but my mum gave me my great grand dads garden spade, fork. rake and sledge hammer. They are over 100 years old, looking at the spade and garden fork, you would never think it. Solid and better than anything modern today, would'nt garden with anything else.
-
Message 15
Posted by Rainjustlearning (U12861332) on Monday, 13th June 2011
I guess my love of gardening must have come from my Grandad, he had 2 allotments, and I used to tag along with him when I could, he had flowers in one and veg in the other, he used to exhibit shallots and won no end of prizes for them then when my parents moved into the bungalow it had a little garden and my Mum used to grow fruit and Dad was roses so I've taken on them both.
Rain -
Message 16
Posted by abbotsmillmo (U13936954) on Tuesday, 14th June 2011
No one at all in my family, were in the least bit interested in gardening.
It happened when we first had a house with a small garden, my front garden was a picture, I have to say the neighbours all loved to look over the wall.
My children, both with large gardens of their own, are following in my footsteps ,,so to speak.. OH is trying to get the GC involved in the veg side of things. -
Message 17
Posted by Calendula (U2331338) on Wednesday, 15th June 2011
I don't know where my interest came from really. Both my father and grandfather gardened but I wasn't interested when I was a child. Nor a young adult - I lived in flats and didn't miss having a garden.
It was probably when I first bought a house and realised I could actually influence what the garden looked like. I have always had a bit of a love/hate relationship mainly because it's so time-consuming - once you have started you can't stop. I read a quote somewhere recently about a garden owning you, not the other way round, and do sometimes fantasise about forgetting about it all and letting the weeds take over. But then someone tells me how nice it looks...
As for learning - a bit of everything; books, tv, internet, trial and error, common sense... -
Message 18
Posted by rushythemushy (U14410322) on Wednesday, 22nd June 2011
just to go off into a little tangent if you like but i was just thinking , is it just the British who've got this passion for gardening ?
not having any family or relatives abroad.
do Americans or Germans have it, do they have the same type of gardens as us ?
do they reel off latin classificasional names ?
i would love to know ! -
Message 19
Posted by jo4eyes (U13654107) on Wednesday, 22nd June 2011
Oh yes the Germans do have a love of gardens. I still communicate with my German penfriend, from 1966/7 & she is a keen gardener, as was her Father.
Me & OH stay at a small hotel in Austria & the lady there is a very keen gardener too, as are lots there.
Language no barrier to gardeners as I discovered up a mountain in Kitzbuel. There is an alpine garden up there & me & an elderly Belgian gentleman wandered around it, chatting as best we could, to get to the exit some time later to find 2 sets of families impatiently waiting for us both
Back to the original question- my Mum loved gardening, always getting cuttings from all over & they just grew. I still have an ivy growing from a bit taken from a stall on Cradley Heath market.
My Grandfather was a good veg grower, although he died when i was little. His brother was in the parks dept & also grew orchids. His garden was wonderful to walk round.
I tried to garden when we had our first house, not a total success, but this houses' garden was more of a challenge, because of a lot of trees in & around it.
In Sept 1996 my Mum was dying & I was sat outside feeling miserable when I suddenly thought right, this needs sorting & started to cut down a Forsythia that was out of control. I never looked back. I used the local library & read & read, made notes & having always watched GW learnt a lot before I tackled things. Gardening became my therapy, still is & I now have those books on my shelf instead of having them permanently out on loan from the library. Beth Chatto's Green Tapestry made me realise that you could garden in shade & Christopher Lloyd's The Well Tempered Garden just made me smile. J. -
Message 20
Posted by groundelder (U11750698) on Thursday, 23rd June 2011
I don't know where I got my love of gardening from - mom and dad just had the obligatory lawn, path, odd rose bush and bedding plants for the summer. My children are not interested in gardening and I learned everything from trial and error.
I suppose it all took off when I got a bigger garden with space to experiment and took guidance from Geoff Hamilton, then Alan Titchmarsh.
Obsessed is the word now, but I knew nothing when I was in my twenties and thirties.
I've just had my first grandchild, so I'm hoping she'll follow in my footsteps! -
Message 21
Posted by bookertoo (U3655866) on Thursday, 23rd June 2011
My dad grew all our veggies when I wa a child (long time ago!), but I came into gardening just by having a garden really. I have a huge bookcase full of gardening books, just because I adore reading them when I can't get outside - but except for the RHS encyclopedia of plants to identify things, hardly use them for information as such. Started, as so many people do, with the 'The Expert' series, still one of the best to begin with I think. Nowadays information and pictures are so readily available on computer you would think gardening books were not needed any more, but judging by my bookshelves, the local library and bookshops that is not so. Still find Geoff Hamiltons 'A year in your garden' the best of the lot to start people off who want a book.
Have a set of 1895 books called 'The Gardeners Assistant' which is amazing in that so much of the information is still so relevant, and some rather less so. Some of the plants we think are new introductions just are not. There is a wonderful quote saying 'if your lake is over an acre in size, you might consider an island ............', different world huh? -
Message 22
Posted by FellowCuckoo (U8523852) on Thursday, 23rd June 2011
I gardened with my mum, in our tiny plot, for as far back as I can remember. I helped her to plant out the annuals grown by her sister and given to her regularly as a birthday present, at the beginning of the summer.
My real learning and passion, however, came from listening to Radio Solent's 'Topsoil' on Saturday and Sunday lunchtimes, with my mum. As a child and then a young woman with my first home, some 30 years ago, I listened to the twice-weekly, hour-long phone-in with the legendary gardener Brian Kidd and other local experts. Then, in a succession of homes and gardens, I learned, read, experimented, made terrible mistakes, moved - and then started again!
Brian Kidd still gives advice on the Radio Solent gardening programme though, sadly, the 'new' programme, with its incredibly irritating presenter, is not nearly as good as 'Topsoil' used to be.
-
Message 23
Posted by thedogcody (U14659366) on Friday, 24th June 2011
I'd forgotten about "Topsoil"-gave up on Radio Solent a while ago-bland does not describe how bad it has become- I remember Brian Kidd -wasn't he something to do with Portsmouth municipal gardens ? and there was an old gardener and they had this friendly banter going all the time and the presenter- I can't remember her name-she was before Pippa Greenwood
Did you ever phone-in with a query at all? -I did a couple of times and received great advice.
Perhaps you can remind me of the presenters name
Geoff -
Message 24
Posted by thedogcody (U14659366) on Friday, 24th June 2011
I gardened with my mum, in our tiny plot, for as far back as I can remember. I helped her to plant out the annuals grown by her sister and given to her regularly as a birthday present, at the beginning of the summer.
My real learning and passion, however, came from listening to Radio Solent's 'Topsoil' on Saturday and Sunday lunchtimes, with my mum. As a child and then a young woman with my first home, some 30 years ago, I listened to the twice-weekly, hour-long phone-in with the legendary gardener Brian Kidd and other local experts. Then, in a succession of homes and gardens, I learned, read, experimented, made terrible mistakes, moved - and then started again!
Brian Kidd still gives advice on the Radio Solent gardening programme though, sadly, the 'new' programme, with its incredibly irritating presenter, is not nearly as good as 'Topsoil' used to be.Ìý
I'd forgotten about "Topsoil"-gave up on Radio Solent a while ago-bland does not describe how bad it has become- I remember Brian Kidd -wasn't he something to do with Portsmouth municipal gardens ? and there was an old gardener and they had this friendly banter going all the time and the presenter- I can't remember her name-she was before Pippa Greenwood
Did you ever phone-in with a query at all? -I did a couple of times and received great advice.
Perhaps you can remind me of the presenters name
Geoff
About this Board
Welcome to the new Gardening Board. If this is your first time, then make sure you check out the
or Ìýto take part in a discussion.
The message board is currently closed for posting.
Weekdays 09:00-00:00
Weekends 10:00-00:00
This messageboard is .
Find out more about this board's
Search this Board
Â鶹Éç iD
Â鶹Éç navigation
Â鶹Éç links
Â鶹Éç © 2014 The Â鶹Éç is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read more.
This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets (CSS) enabled. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience. Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets (CSS) if you are able to do so.