I remember as a kid we used to pull out a Maple tree in the woods,and bring it home and plant it. We always had a garden with tomatoes,corn and lettuce. My uncle in Fla. owned a tropical nursery,and I used to work there in the summer. I can't remember when I didn't like plants. Phil

I had no interest until I was 33 and took a job selling plants and didn't know a thing. I began studying my business developing my interest out of my increasing knowledge. I was calling on a very old nursery lady and she asked me if I really knew anything about plants to which I replied "NO". She said you'll do ok because you are trying hard, I was working to learn because it was the way I fed my family.

The more I learned the more I enjoyed horticulture, that was for me, both a business and an advocation. The enjoyment of plants increased and I've never lost the interest in learning about plants and how to grow them.

I can't separate plants and how to grow them. I've told the story about going to Hosta Club meeting with the most knowledgeable plant lady I ever met. A gentleman was giving a talk about hosta, she nudged me and said "listen to him talking about this hosta and that hosta, he doesn't know squat about how to grow them". I never wanted anyone to say that about me.

I always wanted plants.My grandmother gave me a"strawberry plant"...the indoor decorative kind when I was about 3. I planted nasturshum seeds....and mixed annuals when I wasvery little. I learned how to dead head petunias at avery young age...like 5 or 6 (smart parents!!).
I had aplant or 2 in my bedroom alwaysand several in college.
We bought our first piece of ground about 1 month after my 22nd birthday...in the fall....and I was planting flower seeds before April 1st. And in a few years, I hada back border a front border and flowers all around the house! LOL!
Always been a gardener.
Linda C.....and I have a new key board ordered...

I was about 3 and picked off all the flower buds on my Grandpa's "faudies", as I called them. Then started vegetable gardening in 3rd grade. It was a community garden program and learned a lot.

Always had house plants over the years then got married and had to deal with shade and the woods.

Got my first Hosta from my boss's wife and she told me of a "Hosta Farm" out by them - it was Jean and Pete Ruh's place. Well, took a road trip and that was it...I was hooked! Jean gave me so much valuable advisce plus my first clump of Europen Wild Ginger.

Gardening is a passion and there's just something about digg'n in the dirt - therapeutic!

Deb

When I miscarried our first child, the urge to nurture remained. It was spring. I couldn't NOT garden. Each spring on my baby's birthday it is the only way I have to celebrate the life that almost was.

It hit me a few years ago...kind of out of the blue. I couldn't have cared less before that...my husband still wonders what happened (-:

Not that I consider myself a "plant person"....but maybe getting there.

I enjoy all your stories. Arcy, I am so sorry about your baby. You are right though, gardening is therapeutic. I have never experienced a loss such as yours, but even for the "little stresses" of life, it brightens and encourages.

These stories are all very interesting - how we all came together on this forum.

I came from a very "non-gardening" background. I grew up in Southern Calif. It seems the idea of landscaping there is usually clipped (badly) junipers. To this day I have an aversion to junipers and anything manicured. I always responded to natural, wild looking nature as it wants to be. I use to sit under the sprinklers and look for four leaf clovers and pretend I was in a jungle. This was in HOT, HOT, HOT San Franando Valley. The one thing we grew there that I loved was blue Hydrangas on the north side. They were there when we moved in and the fact that they were usually covered in spiders kept me a bit away. I grew hydrangas in the milder costal climate outside Victoria but they are not that hardy where I am how. I have a couple and some years they bloom and some they don't. This year, for once, it looks like it will be covered with flowers - yeah!

In that house we also had a huge, prolific gardenia bush. To this day if I could grow anything (besides hostas) it would be gardenia.

My next most influencial garden was a neighbor of my Aunts in Long Beach, Calif. The house was on a small residential corner lot but there was not a speck of grass (are you reading Ken?). I loved it. It was tall wildflowers everywhere. There were layers of growth one above the other. The best thing of all was she had lots of pets, cats, dogs, monkeys, birds. I remember the cats wandering through the growth in what struck me as such a natural environment. That garden probably influenced me more than any other.

When I married for the first time and went to Germany for two years with my husband who was in the US army (the time of Vietnam), the whole country over there was magic to me. I had never seen forests, rivers that weren't cement (in Calif. where I lived they were damed up back at the source so we got a culvert), lakes, snow and many other things. It was eye opening to me. When we got back and he went to school we rented an old house on a busy street. I had him dig up about three feet at the front of the yard by the sidewalk and planted a packet of seeds. There were marigolds, batchelor buttons, calendula, zinnia, and other things. People would stop all the time. This was so unusual for people to have flowerers like this you would think it was Butchart Gardens. I supose that was the begining for me.

McT

I inherited my love of plants from my grandmother. She would "borrow" cuttings from neighbors' yards and anywhere else she could get a start of a plant. Once she even stood up in the booth at a restaurant we were at and took a piece of the plant in the overhead hanging basket...lol. She was elderly by then but never feeble minded. Her mind was sharp as a tack until her death at age 93. However, she got away with a lot once she was up in years. Once I learned how to drive(she never drove a car)we would go nursery hopping....we were like best friends enjoying our days and the love of plants. My mom(who is definitely not a plant person) always referred to granny's house as "the jungle" as she had a houseful of indoor plants. She could grow plants out of a stone and her gardens were always a stand out in her neighborhood. I sure miss her...would love to spend a day with her again like we used to.

I can't remember a time when I wasn't interested in plants. My first memories of gardening were following my gramma around her in the garden as she trimmed, weeded and hunted down snails and smashed them. I remember the scent of (zonal) geraniums on the side of the house, camellias in large tubs on her patio, an Iris patch, a mulberry tree planted to feed silkworms she'd brought back from Japan, an assortment of pinks (or as she correctly called them, Dianthus) and huge cascading rosemary plants along a retaining wall. In any case, that's how my interest in plants began, following gramma around the garden. That interest has never really abated; I ended up with degrees in biology and chemistry and a Master Gardener certificate. I've also ended up with a garden that could politely be described as "hortichaos".

Lisa

Many of you have said how gardening is therapuetic, and I agree with that. The longer this thread goes on the more I think it is therapeutic. :)
I miss my grandmother as well, but she had no influence on my love for gardens.

I am 32 years old. When I was a kid, I guess I was in denial a little bit. I loved to play outside like most kids, except I wasnt playing ball with the other boys. I would go dam up the creek so I could dig out a waterfall in it. Then release the dam and see the effects my efforts had. I spent years in boyscouts skipping merit badge classes at camp to go out and do similar things as well as catch critters... all kinds... snakes ...lizards.. chipmunks...scorpions.. turtles... But this was only so I could take them somwhere and design their new home with plants and all....

I am probably going way to far in this post ....but here is the level of my nerdom. When I was 12 a freind showed me the JRR Tolkien book "The Hobbit". I loved the mental imageof "the Shire" it instilled in my head . So a freind and I went out into the woods and created a miniature version of the shire using moss, algae, small plants, and rocks.

Later in life I rented houses and always told myself it was a waste to garden or landscape since it wasnt my property. Then I bought my first house and got married. My wife and her family brought me out of my denial. I had a nice size lot, and my in-laws lived in the country with TONS of land. It was designers dream. They let me help with plant selections and locations and then it began. Since then (5 years and counting) I have been an addict. My wife and I's entertainment is to just walk around different nurseries.

Its outta control... My parents took our kids for the weekend.... and the first night my wife and I just spent at three different nurseries. The next day we planted our prizes. That evening we went on a garden tour of Powell Gardens. And the last day we spent designing our next project.

This probably does not qualify me as a plant person, but I am a landscaper junky. My lot is maybe 130' X 50', and in the last two years here is what I have done:

Built:
3 retaining walls
18' X 15' Rock patio

Planted:
3 trees
6 hostas
5 wild grasses
2 lilac trees
3 hydrangeas
2 wisteria
3 clematis
4 Phlox
60 assorted bulbs (hyacinths, tulips, alliums etc.)
60 stepables(elfin thyme and irish moss on patio between stones)
6 daylilies (not the ditch kind, for you greenguy and Ken)
6 Mums
4 Elepahant ears
5 Coleus
2 Crape Myrtles

and Im sure I am missing some other stuff... and that is all on my little bitty property, not to mention what I have done at my In-Laws.

so I guess im well on my way to being a "plant person"

It all started when I was a toddler and someone bought me an African Violet- which I promptly named Susan...