What or who was the inspiration for your love of gardening?

Please feel free to move if in wrong place.

After looking at the beautiful photos and reading the comments in the photo comp thread I wondered what started you off on gardening?

I grew up in the country, dad grew the veg [mainly potatoes] but it wasn't until hubby and I had our first house that my interest in the garden started to develop. The first flowers I grew were petunias and I was so pleased with them
I found FIL was giving me plants and cuttings and so it progressed into the love of gardening I have today. I have to say the garden is more important to me than my house :hehe:

So who or what inspired you to get gardening? How old were you?

 

I used to be only interested in growing stuff you can eat. I had my first and only allotment when I was 18, partly because I found myself out of work and needed something to get me out of the house, and partly because I'd always helped my dad on his allotment and it just seemed natural.

I quit the allotment when work and social commitments started taking up all my time. Then nothing horticultural for years. I couldn't even be bothered with the back garden. Then after a while I started having a bash at growing some flowers for the wife. It was an unmitigated disaster. Without livestock giving me an endless supply of manure (as I had on the allotment), no decent tools, no experience at all at ornamental gardening, no local tip where I could just pop along and find some old doors etc, I was like a fish out of water.

I kept having half hearted attempts at sorting the garden, and now, while I am still utterly incompetent, I've picked up a few things and have a few things growing, and although my garden is still not impressive, it is a massive improvement on what it was, and will improve further. Each little success is a motivation, each failure is a lesson.

 

I always wanted a country cottage style garden and am trying to create such a place. But I think it was reading The Secret Garden as a child that got me thinking of the romance involved as well.

 

My local park did it for me. I was a bit of a rascal as a child and would often run off for hours and hours on end and invariably ended up alone on the park. A shocking thing to think of now with all the fear of pervs about but it was, for me, the most gorgeous place to be. Wildflowers, little trails, there was even an old disused railway track on there all overgrown with wild roses and stuff. I could hide there and let my imagination run riot.

 

I've always loved the outdoors, but the garden was always just somewhere to fire up the barbeque.

Then about 7 or 8 years ago, I grew a few toms in pots on the patio. I couldn't believe they actually produced real, edible tomatos - imagine, toms growing on plants and not on supermarket shelves! And it went from there, really.