Well I'm not sure how great my story is but I hope it helps :)

Growing up my mom has always had a fantastic garden, and I would run around and pick all sorts of flowers and turn them upside down and pretend they were fairies in beautiful dresses. I would play "stories" for hours by myself.... no wonder I love gardening so much!

Now that I have two young girls myself I always make sure we go out and pick the most fancy fairie "dresses" in the garden. Always the best flower of the bunch... and I even went as far as making sure we have a welcome home for our fairy friends LOL... I guess I'm still a kid at heart.

Campanula, that is a great story. Thanks for sharing it.

Campanula - The Concise British Flora in Colour! My bible for years. It was a revolution in wild flower books and a work of art in itself. I absolutely loved that book and spent hours just leafing through it.

Both are great stories! Many thanks to both of you - I will use both of them in my assignment!

Not sure if it was obvious but the Keble-Martin Camp refers to is TCBFIC which I mentioned.

I once had a co-worker who was a fellow gardener. We had to stop ourselves from gabbing too much about our gardens. She also had a sister who gardened. It was obvious that they were close and she was very proud of her sister's gardening skill. Unfortunately, her sister became ill with cancer and died a couple of years later. My poor co-worker suffered this loss greatly but took solace in her garden and children. She told me that her sister loved Angelique tulips so I decided to plant several bunches in her memory. The property I had at that time was not great for tulips so I mostly treated them as annual. I had heard that Angeliques were good foracting like a perennial so I thought I would try since they were her favourite. Well they returned year after year robust and gorgeous. To this day they are they only tulip I have had success with. I recently moved so I will plant these again at my new property.

Wow! This question brings back a flood of memories. Dad was a horticulturist of note. I teethed on Latin plant names. The Arnold Arboretum in Boston, MA. was my playground when he was there in connection with his work. But it was the time period he spent as Director of the Ma. Horticultural Society Spring Flower Show during my high school years that influenced my life. He would take me with him as he directed the construction activities of the show before it opened. Have you ever observed the effort it takes to put such a major show together? I was fascinated by the project. In a few days a flat exhibition floor was transformed into a wonderland of waterfalls, rock gardens, color and fragrance. These observations are what influenced my landscaping interests in the horticultural world. A quick answer to what has been a lifetime of fun.

There is no 'non-gardening season in the UK, Woody, since snowfall is sporadic and short-lived...in fact, winter is the busy season for pruning, sowing, clearing, bare-root planting and getting on with endless structural work such as building supports, mending fences and relaying paths - the chipper is never silent unless rain (like today). Even so, I absolutely agree that doing courses, learning new skills and refusing to hibernate in a TV induced stupor is the only sane way to deal with chilly downtime. Coincidentally, the freezy weather invites a careful scrutiny of woolly clothes (hoping the dread moths have not been munching all summer) and always, always marks the start of knitting season. I have almost finished an alpaca jumper for daughter-in-law and have (again) dragged out the (expensive) yak wool fail of 3 winters ago, in the hope of inspiration...and avoidance of a fourth frogging session. I am going for broke with an added peplum but sadly, there is no getting around it, there will, again, be unravelling and reknitting to justify the eye-watering cost of this lovely, fine, but warm yarn.

And just in case it gets stashed away for another year, I have a trove of mulberry silk and merino for a winter cardigan for me...and have learned a valuable lesson - not to make it up as I go along but to stump up for a pattern.

Exactly - I've just got in from playing with the new pole pruner I got for Christmas. It was 50f outside and sunny. I potted up a winter jasmine which had rooted in a vase and started rootling about looking for some sweet pea seeds I thought I had. I didn't. The sap is already rising in the gardener though.

I knitted a cardigan once. To prove I could. But that was the beginning and end of my knitting career.

Wonderful stories! Keep 'em coming... :-) I think I'll provide a link to this thread when I prepare the assignment so my class can read the stories in detail if they want to.

Camp - I've never seen yak wool.... I wonder if it's like muskox wool, which is supposed to be great stuff - I haven't used that either though. Re patterns - I tend to start with a pattern - but feel free to modify it if the mood strikes or I want to simplify it or reshape it in some way. I like some of the Kaffe Fassett patterns but I'd never have the patience to use all the short bits of wool in lots of colors the way it is in many of those patterns. Below is a picture of a sweater I made based on a pattern of his but with the colors simplified and ribbing replacing fancier stuff... Re unfinished projects - I have a basket of those :-)

floral - I just saw your post.... Actually, we did get out last weekend (-7C) and pruned a branch that was starting to block a path off a dogwood so I guess a bit of gardening is possible from time to time. But most winter 'gardening' is done in my head! :-)

woodyoak - Sorry, I was interrupted and did not directly finish my thoughts re your question. A friend in my early days, Clarence Birdseye, not only developed the frozen food industry but also became obsessed with cranberries and the struggling cranberry business on Cape Cod after WWII. His cranberry obsession and financial help building packing houses and bog development saved the Cape Cod economy. He then turned his interest to the Beach Plum (Prunus maritima) noting that this shrub grew best on Martha's Vineyard. He offered to establish a similar business there developing the Beach Plum as a world wide food product. The Island natives rejected his proposal. Today there is increased interest in growing the Beach Plum commercially along the east coast.

Another friend, Horticulturist Nelson Coon was so interested in the Parma violet that he devoted his life to reintroducing it to the trade and writing about violets. He authored a number of excellent gardening books which should be dusted off library shelves and read. Some great and helpful information to be found in his writings.

nandina - you have interesting gardening family and friends :-). I'll check out Nelson Coon. I'm always looking for interesting garden reads.....

So many of my relationships were made in the garden. My sense of sinful carelessness came to me with a armful of bittersweet in my arms coming through a door and the winter wind grabbed the door and smashed into a table and a ming dynasty vase toppled off onto my stretched out foot snapping its neck.. Joy and pride came to me by my grandmother's side taking cut flowers and making arrangements in all the different styles. Vindictiveness found me and my two sisters stuffing ginkgo balls down my neighbors kid's pants after he had pissed on our front door stoop. That was our brand of gang warfare, But one of the deepest relationships was built with my grandfather in the woods and fields around his place.

As a boy, My grandfather learned from his father that one could not just walk through a woods , willy nilly. One had to have a purpose for the endeavor. This was said by a man who wandered the woods making small mini dams everywhere.. His very unhumble goal was to raise the water table which was very deep where he lived..on his sizable hunk of land. He once had his son drain a pond and line it with brick to see if that would increase or decrease the absorption rate. He did create a area of many small bogs which is enjoyed still by all the people who have bought up his farm .

My grandfather had a plant love, mushrooms, and a plant hate, scotch thistle.

The love was somewhat normal. It after all had garden societies centered around the activity, Children and grandchildren were all versed in all the wonders of many mushrooms. My Uncles kids even pointed, standing on one leg pointing with their index finger like a dog when a good one was found. Uncle john took my brand new husband through the woods in search for the infamous berserker mushroom ( favorite of the vikings for battle) and came home with all sorts of strange fungus.. Precocious cousin Margo was heard at 4 running in with mushroom and latin name. I have this memory of stringing garlands of chanterelles between the white doric columns on the logia as the sun set . We had picked them climbing Mt Chocarua .

The garden Scotch Thistle hate verged on obsession as many hates do. No thistle society here. He went after thistles on his farm and over the neighbors and the neighbor's neighbors and neighbor's neighbor's neighbors with a systematic and relentless abandon. He had his dogs and grandchildren trained to search out the miscreants. we started out the year close at hand and circled round and round farther and farther afield in all directions. Walks happened every day . Grandpa , the two dogs and 4 kids. All the neighbors were cool with it. By summer's end, sometimes we got as far as 5 miles.

His friends had all accompanied him on a thistle walk or two . I remember this huge shindig that was his 60th birthday party. Two artist brought presents. A 15' hoe sculpture mysteriously appeared sunk in on the south slope of the hill below the house, and a huge papier-mâché thistle also was brought in and was immediately attacked and dismembered by the guest.

He died in '65. I miss him. 20 years later, I was again at the house (now my Uncle's) and my uncle was showing me a newspaper article from the local news about the mysterious void of scotch thistle that a botanist had found in the county. Dead center of the circle drawn in the illustration was where we were standing. I looked up at my Uncle John, and, finger to his lips, he said "SHHHHH".

To this day , once a year, I grub out all the thistles in my front field and I can feel me channeling him. But this is Texas, Not Pennsylvania and walking over neighbors land with hoes and dogs is frowned on.

On my mother's side there is the gardening "gene". My grandfather loves plants - all plants especially natives and trees. Where others see weeds and pests, he sees nature. My mother grew up listening to him and chose a major in college that had to do with plants. I grew up with plants all over and always a garden of some sort. I remember pulling the silvery wrinkled old leaves off jade plants when i was really little and pretending they were gold or money.

I helped her water and knew from a young age to water until the water comes out of the holes on the bottom and to check the soil with your finger first. As you might know, those two things are probably the difference between most green and brown thumbs.

Gradually I had my own little patch or dirt every so often and maybe even a pot or two. The only time I have been even the slightest without plants is when I had my second child and had two small children needing my attention. That didn't last long as we bought our first home soon and I was horrified the first Spring to see no bulbs came up. I have since planted over a thousand - not nearly enough, though!

Some things just matter - you don't know why, but it's part of you. I love a garden and watching things grow and tending then just make me HAPPY. So, so much is complicated, but here you have simple pleasures. It restores the heart and soul more than any electronic device.

Ooooh, a little envious of all those who learned at the hands of a beloved grandparent...no such luck in my family. I grew up loathing 'outside' and the countryside was something to be driven through at top speed between towns since it was full of things which bite or sting. Until almost 40, my (ahem) 'garden' was a patch of stomped mud, thanks to the lurchers and kids and my own habit of channelling the 'Beverley Hillbillies' (yes, we had that in the UK) with a collection of ancient bicycles (my true love at the time) and defunct white goods. Returning from town, I was astonished to see that my 9year old daughter had 'tidied up' the yard (please be aware that 'yard' in UK parlance does NOT mean 'garden')...so we went in search of a plant to cheer it up. We chose a lavatera - one of the toughest, vigorous, most obliging plants possible. After lucking out with a second pick of Japanese anemones - chosen solely on the name (exotic), I became convinced, overnight, I had greenfingers...and the rest is history. Within a decade, I had done 4 years of college, acquired an allotment, retired from social work and embarked on a second career as a gardener. And became obsessed to the point of insanity. And as a bonus, my feeble winter wimping out, snivelling round the fire complaining of chillblains, vanished as I 'hardened off' like any tender seedling (and also discovered that there is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes).

I am making up for lost time with my family though - a persistence bordering on child cruelty has sapped their wills and swayed each and every one of them into plantlove...so much the eldest is following in my footsteps as a professional gardener (we attended college together) while the youngest, my metalworker, lovingly crafted tiny tools for the hands of a three year old grandchild (while pursuing a mad craze for succulents, cactii, carnivorous biog plants and latterly, with DiL, orchids). Seed collecting is almost a family hymn (many times I have pulled crumpled envelopes from pockets in the laundry)...mainly because I also handed them on my cheapskate practices regarding 'free plants'.Middle daughter has also imbibed continual lectures regarding social justice and has gone down the social work route...but is our family beekeeper.

And then we bought a wood.

Probably like most people my most intense gardening started out with buying a house.

We tore out & re-did the inside from stem to stern, decorated it to our liking and took the same approach outside--we tore out & decorated that as well for curb appeal, approaching it as a sort of an outdoor room arranged to look just so. I was a neat-nik to the point of trimming plants with scissors, mulching for perfect looking neatness around chosen plants, obsessive weeding to keep up a perfect deep green, weed free 'carpet' to go around the 'furniture' and keeping it all watered ---which meant sprinklers running every other day most of the time in summer. Meanwhile, I was constantly buying more pretty plants which I arranged and rearranged or discarded as my taste changed or when I got bored. The beds kept growing in size. Perfection and lots of color was my goal along with a desire to impress passers-by if I'm being honest about it. Sooner or later I'd get bored with just about anything I bought but often I just wanted some new piece of flash that caught my eye which gave me an excuse to go plant shopping (again) which I loved to do back then.

Then in 2006 we took a trip to New Mexico. I loved the wild plants growing in the countryside and the SW look of peoples yards and it hit me hard how trite and artificial my own landscape and most of the others around Oklahoma City were. None of them reflected where we lived. It was as if we had no local pride or sense of place. I remember thinking even the weeds are pretty in New Mexico. That was the first thing that got me focused on 'weeds' or more to the point, natives. When we got home I started ripping out the next day. I enjoyed doing this once I started because I was so motivated and disgusted with the whole thing and I had a focus unlike any I'd ever had. As the massive piles stacked up by the curb the yard soon became totally bare. I now had a clean slate.

A wider world opened up as the country-side became the example to follow for what I wanted to see on my own small space of land. I began reading books about the dust bowl, early settlers and inevitably drifted into ecological issues and the shrinking grasslands. I felt a stronger connection to my own location where I'd grown up and always lived. I was able to see the simple beauty of it and my appreciation grew. I fell in love with prairie grasses, they reminded me of the small towns of my childhood and a strong sense of nostalgia set in.

I also noticed with alarm the amount of forestation and urban sprawl happening all around me and our lack of appreciation for what is native in our area. Each new development ate up more of the prairie which was quickly replaced with green bermuda lawns & sprinkler systems along with beds filled with imported trees, shrubs, perennial and alien ornamental grasses, usually Miscanthus. Each new addition displayed a boring and expected sameness. Foreign trees are naturalizing further into the grasslands all around these additions like weeds.

Around the same time, the city began urban renewal downtown and around the capitol where they were mass planting prairie grasses to serve as decorative plants. The effect was refreshing and surprisingly modern looking. Several post modern homes were being built and industrial buildings were also being refitted into high end modern housing. All of these tend to opt for a prairie type of landscape which means lots of texture and sunlight effects. The result is an spacious, open, pared down, clean, modern look and distinctly Oklahoma. It was becoming 'cool and with it' to go this route but it shows people are beginning to think of the environment.

Oklahoma is a rough place to garden where nature seems uncooperative if you try to go against it. With the trend of using native plants and grasses it seems we might be coming full circle and learning about self sustaining landscaping. For me, its more interesting and appealing. I didn't start out with ideas or concerns about ecology but that change I made back in 2006 lead me there very quickly.

Campanula - I posted your recent comment about how you - and your kids - got into gardening on a thread on my course titled 'green thumbs'. Here is the instructor's comment in response: 'Too funny, and too many parts sounded as though she was describing me.' :-).

I haven't got feedback yet on the other stories all of you generously supplied for use in the assignment. Thank you all so much for your help.

Some of the people in the class were interested in my comments regarding this forum so I provided the link to the forum (and a link to this thread at one point.). So maybe some of my classmates will join in at some point - maybe after the course is over.

Hope so, Woody - new members are the lifeblood of forums...in fact, I really ought to make more of an effort to publicise GW to other gardeners I know. Glad to hear my little thread gave some amusement - I have long known I am part of a demographic - middle aged folk whose children have grown and are facing a nurture gap which must be filled. Oddly, when my children were small, I simply could not keep a plant alive for longer than a few weeks...leading me to think that plants, like all living things, actually require a bit more engagement than just the bare essentials for growth - they seem to require some emotional input too (touching, sounds and unscientific but seemingly necessary attention)...which is never going spare when dealing with the demands of a growing family (at least in my case).

Nuture gap,..hmmmm. I just like to chop things down.

Yes, well you are in Texas now, Mara

Camp, I am in my forestry phase for the year. I am a chopping fool. I call it "reductive gardening." Mostly I think "KILL" with chainsaw in hand.

Ah yes, 'reductive gardening'. Been doing a fair bit of that myself after a 4 year dereliction of duty towards the ramblers on the plot. Rejuvenation pruning is just the ticket for a winter day - go in hard with the loppers and polesaw...none of that fannying about searching for nascent buds and angled cuts - just a brutal swipe back to the most basic framework - terrific. The chipper has not been silent and I have many giant tubs of chippings to spread around the blackcurrants. Trying out the new Metabo reciprocating saw - heavier than I would like but pokey. Some blood loss and scars though.

I got a Dewalt sawzall (bright Yellow stands out in the brush)) and it is alright for the occasional tree after the big going over with the chainsaw. for the ones I forgot and a tad to large for the lopper. But the batteries do not last long enough to make it a thing to depend on for the major work. Also much slower than the chainsaw and slower than the lopper for the smaller stuff. I mostly chop slash up in 3 foot sections and leave to hold down the soil on the slope. I am not looking for neatness back there, more helping the forest to its next stage. The good thing about the sawzall is if the blade gets stuck in a twisting tree as it falls, one just unattaches the blade from the machine, get another blade and continue....ooops I have gotten off topic.