Who inspired you to get digging?

[lumpyjumper]

Firstly my dear departed Grandfather, who died in August this year, he had a veg and fruit plot at the bottom of their garden and as children we spent a lot of time with our grandparents as they only lived a mile away.

He used to grow gooseberries, rhubarb and peas, I'm sure he grew much more but these are what I remember most.

He was so chuffed when earlier this year, on what was to be his last visit to us in Devon, I showed him my little beds of veg, and that I was growing peas because that's what I remember of him! He had a tear in his eye (as I have now) as he told me he had only planted them for me, as he had so much pleasure watching us girls pick the pods and eat the peas straight from them!

Hence my first foray into gardening this year saw me grow rhubarb, goosgogs and peas amongst other things, I think he would be smiling at my ineptitude but proud of the start I'd made with my daughter too.

My mum is a keen gardener too but more into flowers etc. So we are learning to veg grow together, I do the work, she hands me the advice!!!

LJ

[Winged one]

My dad.

When we were very small, back in the 1970's, Ireland was pretty depressing and Dad had a large and growing family to feed on small wages (and very high interest payments on the mortgage). So the back garden was turned into a veg garden with a small bit of lawn for playing on (we had a lawn and flowers in the front, and a huge green to the front as well). He used a blue plastic barrel as a strawberry planter (made loads of holes with his drill to form discs to remove for the plants). We had an apple tree in that house, blackcurrants and a lot of veg. I think he even had an asparagous bed.

When we moved across the road, he put up a polytunnel and dug out veg space again (bigger house and larger garden - bigger family to feed). We have 4 apple trees in this house (some eating, some cooking), blackcurrant bushes (which are no longer minded so non productive), the raspberry canes are now gone but were there for years. The tunnel had loads of tomatoes, courgettes and cucmbers every year. He had a vine in there too which produced a few grapes on good years.

Outdoors, he'd have a large herb area and lots of lettuce and french beans. Myself and 2 sisters each had our own patch, to grow what we wanted (never a lot but I liked keeping it dug). Some years he'd grow sweetcorn. He gave up on peas after I'd eaten them all about 4 years in a row and none made it to the kitchen!! No more strawbs though. And I do remember potatoes and carrots, and occasional years of winter cabbage, but they were when I was very small. OOOh and rhubarb - always had rhubarb.

As we all got older and he got busier at work, the garden has reverted to lawn and shrubs. The trees are still there and productive, and mum has a small herb bed, but that's about it. But he is talking about putting in a new tunnel (old one died about 14 years ago).


When we bought our first house, we didn't ever really settle into it but we did plant a fruiting cherry tree in the garden (which was yum!). But never did anything else (too busy on other things at the time).

But when we bought our current house, I started putting tubs of peas in the patio from the first summer, and a hanging basket of cherry toms (garden very small for true veg growing). This year, the first year we actually had the lottie, DH actually went off and bought french bean plants for the garden and his mum gave me a few lettuce seedlings which I stuck in the flowerbed as well. And we had a load of tomato plants from our compost - so it was probably our most productive year ever by a long shot before you even mention the lottie (not great amounts of produce, but more than we expected this year).

Ooops, meant to add that DH used to have a veg patch in his garden too, and he used to tend it for years, so while he wasn't keen on growing anything in the old house, he is delighted that I had the initiative to get the lottie and has enjoyed it just as much as me.

[JennieAtkinson]

Where in Wales Jennie?

Govilon, just outside Abergavenney. Beautiful area. Are you anywhere near?

[piskieinboots]

ditto 'my dad'

My first memories are of going to lottie with him, he had two to tend! I always loved being put on pea picking duty, although Dad got fed up with a sack of empty pods ::innocent face::

I was going to lottie with him in the late 50's to mid 60's, we had a cracking make-shift 'barbie', he put together some bricks topped off with an old grill rack - he would take bacon and eggs up for our breakfast.....ah such sweet memories

[shirlthegirl43]

Govilon, just outside Abergavenney. Beautiful area. Are you anywhere near?

I am 103 miles closer to Ireland! Slap bang between the LNG sites and the 2 Irish crossing routes

[HeyWayne]

Simon Mayo

Well, ok, not Simon Mayo exactly, but the programme "The Big Dig". I watched it last year and thought I quite like the look of that - surely it can't be that hard!? I was right - it's bloody harder!

Parents and Grandparents aren't/weren't exacly keen gardeners - we're urbanytes. That said, I do remember my step-Granddad (Grampy) doing a bit of gardening when he and my Nan ran an old people's home amny moons ago.

Lady HW's grandfather apparently was a prolific gardener and had 2-3 greenhouses and grew loads. I'd of loved to have met him, I reckon we'd of got on famously! Lady HW worked picking tomatoes as a young'un, I think she'd had her fill of growing fresh produce as a result! (mind you, she does like the picking part still...)

Part of the reason for me wanting to do the whole grow your own thing was so that I can pass on to my children (as and when we have them) what wasn't passed on to me.

[piskieinboots]

that's superb HeyWayne, really good to hear how you have come gardening without it being in the blood so to speak and excellent to hear you wish to pass your knowledge on to the little HW's

[SueA]

My dad only ever grew runner beans & sometimes dahlias,chrysanths or gladioli in our back garden, everything else was lawn with just a bedding border & rose bushes in the front garden. He wasn't a keen gardener but I liked to cut the hedges & had a little patch of soil where I used to grow flowers. I never really bothered with gardening much when we first got married but gradually got into it & was encouraged by my late father-in-law to grow tomatoes like he did & by my lovely neighbour Avril who died last year to grow plants from cuttings & seeds she gave me. T.V wise the great Alan Titchmarsh has encouraged me as I used to watch Gardeners' World religiously when he did it as there always seemed to be something in his garden you could copy. I do like Geoff Hamilton too but have only seen repeats of his shows & when Monty Don did 'Fork to Fork' on T.V. I wanted to grow tasty food to cook as he did.

[cyanara]

My Papa... He was teaching me so much... I could always ask him and he's know the answer... he was a great resource... he died september 12th this year and i have struggled being in the garden so much because it all reminds me of hime and what we used to do together.. but now my garden will be his memorial.. every time i plant something, see something start to bloom.. i'll think of him.

You guys are my resource now... I may not post much but i read a lot... Thanks!

[Newbie]

Mine was my dad too, and my mum to a lesser extent.

I grew up in a house with a large garden in Cumbria & dad had a veg patch at the bottom in the back garden & always grew potatoes, cabbage, lettuce, sprouts etc. He aways had a very productive rhubarb patch too (maybe something to do with the number of family pets burried under it!). I remember regularly being sat with my dad in his greenhouse helping transplant millions of little seedlings, and always sneeking out in the early mornings with my brother to steal the stawberries!

Both parents are still very keen gardeners & since hubby to be & I moved to our new house in Nottingham this April, which has 3/4 acre of "blank canvass" garden, I have been keen to get my own veg patch started. This year i've been glued to the Carol Klein & her Grown your oen Veg programme, i have her book too which has been helpful. I've also watched Simon Mayo on the Big Dig, amongst other programmes.

My parents are finding it hilarious as whenever they wanted to watch Gardeners World or visit a garden centre when we were little it was always deemed by my brother & I to be "BB" or Bl**dy Boring!"

[mapcr77]

Its not who, but what, as I wanted to get some ingredients used in Mexican cooking that I couldn't find in England. Mexicans are not very green fingered, and even though my mum took pride in her garden and we had a few edibles, quite franlky it wasn't much of a challenge to grow things there, just pop the seeds in the ground and voila! We even had a peach tree grown from seed. But now gardening has proven to be more than a hobby, i'd say its an addiction! Now I want to grow everything and I look like a mad woman staring at skips every time I walk past one... :-S

[lainey lou]

My Dad and Grandad have always grown their own, Dad in the garden and Grandad had the most wonderful allotment up until recently.
They are both so proud that I am carrying on the tradition. We recently spent a lovely afternoon going through our seeds together and discussing what we would be growing next year and with them advising me on what had done well/ not so well in the past for them.
Good times!

[nick the grief]

My Dad was a megger keen gardener and always tried to get me involved but I hated it especially sitting in a greenhouse r growing Chrysanths !!! ( I bet he's chuckling in in grave now!!)

When I got my own house it was Mrs G moaning about the fact her arms got wet when she was hanging out washing ..... never did like cutting lawns and then I saw 3 series on TV.

Geoffrey Smith (I think it was either World of flowers or a re run of GW), Grow With Joe, and finally the best presenter of GW there has ever been Geoff Hamiltons Cottage Garden series, after that I was hooked and I decided I didn't care what Mrs G liked I was going to have the garden I wanted. As it happened she quite likes it now.

[wellie]

Me! Me! ... it was Me!

Which makes me laugh now when I think back to it.

And my Popa grew tomatoes in his small greenhouse every year, and he used to take me in there on the weekends to help 'shake' the plants, and explained just why we were doing that. That unmistakable 'tomato smell' as I tend my own tomatoes every year now, brings back such a wonderful memory of those precious moments I spent with him.
(move on - welling up now....!)

Having got married many decades later, I moved into my husband's dinky little cottage, and I thought the garden was looking a bit 'green', just being grass, a cluster of shrubs, a Nelly Moser and a Sloe tree (well, I know that NOW!)
More Colour, I thought. So.... armed with hubby's credit card (!) I took myself off to the local garden centre and purchased a veritable feast of colour.

Come October - they all DIED !!! OH NO !!! Whatever had happened?
I was kindly advised by a neighbour that I had planted annuals, and come the first frosts, they DO have a tendency to keel over and kick the bucket.

Well, quite naturally, I was MORTIFIED!
To this day I can't work out whether it was because I'd been quite so thick or I'd spent all that hard-earned money.

So, at the ripe old age of 'somewhere in my late twenties', and by now 'intrigued by this gardening lark', I took myself off back to college and did a City & Guilds in Horticulture.
I was the oldest in class (by roughly 10 years) and the only girl, to boot...
But my goodness did my Convent School Latin come in useful! I had all the lads forming a queue behind me on 'Plant Identification' Test Days, whispering "Wellie! what's this one?" (Verbena bonariensis, Quercus robur, Symphoricarpos orbiculatus) "Eh?"..... Clever Wellie....

The more I learnt, the more I wanted to know, and what started out as an interest, became a hobby, which then became a passion, and finally, I just couldn't get enough of it, so decided to do it as a Day Job.

Only in the last 3 years have I attempted to extend that passion into growing herbs, fruit and wegetables, and I am completely and helplessly addicted to that as well now.

Thankfully, I now appreciate all four Seasons, and what each of them has to offer, and because there's no such thing as a 'Know-It-All' I am contented in the knowledge that I have so much more to learn.

And just how exciting is THAT?!

[moggssue]

My dad! And 'celebrity' wise Geoff H. I have a photo of me aged about 2 with a tiny play greenhouse outside my dads real greenhouse, it still makes me giggle today! I had cacti in it, presumably because they're so difficult to kill off!!