Kitchen Garden Forum

Who is or are the main reasons for you getting into gardening or allotmenteering?

I have always seemed to have an interest in gardening, I remember watching Percy Thrower on Blue Peter back in the 70’s and being fascinated and then I was given a spot of my parents garden to grow a few things. At first I grew only veg, but coming from a farming family that is hardly surprising.

All through my school life when living at home I helped in the garden, used to spend hours mowing the lawns but loved every minute of it, doing the winter digging in the veg garden was not a chore.

Then other gardeners came to my attention, people like Peter Seabrook and Roy Lancaster. I used go out of my way to find books by them or hear them on gardeners question time. Very few of the current crop of “designer” TV gardeners do much for me.

But my main inspiration has to be my parents. Most farmers have a reputation for be rubbish gardeners but both my parents have an instinctive approach to gardener and a real passion for plants. You can see some of their garden here. Pictures taken this time last year:

http://s6.photobucket.com/albums/y222/s ... ay%202005/

So who inspires/inspired you?

Jerry

My Grandad up in South Shields.
His garden is always full of beautiful flowers which he grew for my Gran.
My Grandad in Manchester was the veg grower and I always helped him out when we visited.
I just like being outdoors.
My parents have always kept a nice garden; but aren't particularly horticultural.

Your pictures are lovely-are those your children?

My Dad & my nan are my gardening inspirations-I come from a long line of amateur vegetable gardeners, although my (not sure how many greats) grandad was Head Gardener at a "big house" nr Leicester. My nan was growing her own veg well into her 90's & Dad seemed to spend most of my childhood in the garden, smoking his pipe & contemplating the veg. He tried to get us kids involved but, of course, we weren't interested. It's only since I got a bigger garden last autumn that I've got interested in veg growing. Unfortunately, Dad died in February & before that he had dementia so wasn't in a position to give much advice. I often think of him, though, when I'm in the garden using the tools I nicked from his shed!

I truly believe it's in your genes. My grandfather spent most of his spare time in his garden but I never knew him. I can remember sowing pansy seeds into the dry bare compacted earth in front of the flat where I lived when I was about 7 - 8 in Brixton. I also remember getting 3rd prize for the Candytuft I'd managed to grow on a windowledge in the same flats (in an old biscuit tin).
I was fascinated by a hardy fuschia bush in some communal ground close by and I remember pinching Love in a Mist flowers from someone's garden and pressing them. All of these memories are some of the most vivid from my childhood. I had no access to a garden and no one to inspire me yet I was drawn to it all the same.
Jerry your garden's really lovely!

I beg to differ re: genes. My parents were gardening-phobes and despite having a large garden, were not at all interested in it. They employed someone else to come and tend it for them!!!

When I first got married I was always interested in gardening, but as my children grew up, time was at a premium and energy even more so. It's only been these last 5 years or so that I've started to become - some would say - obsessive about tending my own garden. It all started with a 10' by 10' veggie patch in our tiny back garden. Followed by a friend who helpfully pointed out a vacant allotment opposite hers.

Now we have just sold our house in order to buy a house with my allotment in the garden, instead of having to travel to look after it!

It will be interesting to see if my daughters have inherited any of my passion for gardening....

Hello,
Likewise Jerry....I too watched Percy Thrower on Blue Peter...

....I appeared on Blue Peter myself too..but not quite gardening and that's a n other story


Peter Seabrook and Arthur Billitt..used to get a watching on the tele'

My parents have always gardened with the classic split of Father doing the vegetables and Mother the flowers.

Father learned from his father..my Grandpa. I can only just remember Grandpa...I can vaguely remember him feeding me Chocolate Buttons and also recall the scent of his pipe tobacco. He worked on the railways..GNR/LNER/BR and had a large garden whilst living in a lineside gatehouse.

...and Mother learned from her Father, my Grandad. He started work at big house in Leicestershire as a garden boy before moving into horses and carriage work.. he inherited a smallholding in Lincolnshire at which he made a hard earnt living.... but he was a gardener at heart, I think, rather than a farmer..
He grew some wonderful Chrysant's and vegetables too.. on the heaviest clay land he had.. recognising the true potential of clay. Reasting it up with an iron bar rather than digging. he then let the frost work wonders on it over the Winter.. and then leaving it until the absolute right day for knocking it down on a drying Spring day...keeping off it 'til that day.

Grandad used to have a bonfire heap on the farm roadside.. which became my first vegetable patch.. I recall growing some wonderful Maris Peer in the ash enriched ground.. perhaps 1969...Maris Peer, I think, being the same age as me..??!!

Visits to Uncles Tom and Bill in Whitwick Leics once a year over many years and seeing their old glasshouses and garden also infuenced..

I had a hand in reclaiming the headmasters lost lawn and dissued veg' plot in the last year at Junior School.

I then acquired some vegtable ground at home on an abandoned building plot next door which basically came about as a result of keeping a strip of land cultivated on the plot to keep the rubbish from encroaching onto ours...the owner let me widen the strip a bit..!!

Mowers first appeared at age 4.??...but the first did not cut too well.. being infact Mums push along carpet sweepr dragged from understairs cupboard to front lawn..!!!

Then on to Qualcast Super Panther at home and Qulacast B1 at Grandads.

Qualcast B1.

Petrol mowers only came onto the scene on leaving school after sixth form years of watching Vulcans, Victors, Lightnings, Phantoms etc...not wanting to go to uni' like all my friends..and thus not taking studying at all seroiusly..!!! YTS scheme and then further employment in the mower world..

Current work C.14 years now.. sees me full time gardening...
Also father being a bit poorly.. so more gardening back home too...

Too wet to get on the ground this weekend... so was back looking at Aeroplanes again yesterday.. including a little Centaurus power..

All the best,
Clive.

Jopsy,

Yes they are my kids, the youngest loves hamming it up for the camera and the oldest loves driving the mower when we go and stay.

Jenny,

I take no credit for the pictues on the link, that is Mum and Dad's hard work!

But thanks any way.

Jerry

I guess for me it is about going up to my Dad's plot by the Railway Line in Wythenshawe Manchester(Baguley to be exact), mucking about with the wheelbarrow, chasing frogs out of the sunken bath / waterbutt, taking veg home for sunday lunch and earning pocket money winter digging at the age of 14.

I think it is genetic, as now my plot is my sanctuary, no telephones, no idiot drivers on the road, very little opportunity to exercise Victor Meldrew mode, although pests eating crops could do it!! As do kids throwing stones from adjoining field to break my greenhouse.

On the whole it is seeing rows and rows of neat vegetables and contented chaps (and chappesses)leaning on spades and pontificating about the best time to plant or whether or not too spray) Your plot is yours, do it wrong, do it right or do it different, you only have yourself to answer to.

I think that is my inspiration, the whole thing rather than one person, although Bob Flowerdew's inventiveness inspires me from time to time.

Compo

For me it's got to be my dear departed Dad.

As the headmaster of a boarding school he got nicknamed "Joby", from Jobe the eternal gardener.