The gardening bug
What makes us take up gardening? Are there really such things as green fingers? Are we born with the desire to tend our plots or does the passion for gardening come with age, or by accident? So much depends on whether the opportunity is there to give it a go in the first place.
I was always going to “work with the soil”, according to my mum. Unlike my sister, I spent my early days mucking around in the garden, making mud pies (to throw at my sister), playing with worms and ants and helping my dad puddle in leeks on the veg plot. I loved it, and am still enchanted by the smell of bonfires on summer evenings and swollen, ripe gooseberries, just as I was when I was roughly the same height as the plants.
I also had a strong affinity with the garden wildlife, or at least I liked to think so. I remember my dad waiting for the blue tits to leave the nest box so he could quickly lift me up and show me the baby birds inside. Once, aged two, I found a worm that had been pecked at by a bird, so I rushed indoors to fetch cotton wool and warm water to dress its wound, and then put a plaster on it. (The poor worm, I don’t know why my mum didn’t stop me.)
By the time I was eleven, I had a veg plot of my own. Then, after a brief teenage interlude, I discovered cacti at university. It wasn’t long before I had a flat full of plants and an allotment of my own to play with.
I couldn’t live without gardening – it makes me feel whole. If I’m tired, stressed, unhappy, I garden to feel better. I get up early to squeeze gardening in before work, and I’ll go hungry when I get home in the evening to spend the last hours of sunlight with the plants, frogs and bees.
But that’s enough of me. I asked around the office and, not surprisingly, the answers were all similar. Ross’s interest began when his mum bought a bromeliad and gave him the task of watering it; Elaine discovered gardening by being wheeled around in her granddad’s wheelbarrow and Cat buried a mouldy tomato in a pot of soil and ended up (miraculously) harvesting her first home-grown fruits a few months later.
The one thing we had in common was early access to a garden. Would we be sat in this office without that privilege? Gardening doesn’t just help heal temporary blips, it changes lives. That’s why community gardens and allotment initiatives run by organisations like Groundwork and the BCTV, are so important. They help people learn new skills, improve their local area and give them access to green space. To me, life without green space isn’t worth thinking about.
I’d love to hear how you got into gardening. Was the desire there from childhood or did you develop an interest as an adult?
