When I was little, my family had a house with a barn, a big cellar and a paved yard in a small village. Since there wasn’t too much green in said yard (we did grow chives there, though!), we also had an allotment garden. The earliest garden-memories I have are those of being in that garden and watching our allotment-neighbour’s chickens through the fence. As you might imagine, I had a lot of fun but wasn’t really successful at gardening, which is a theme that stuck with me.
After we moved into the neighbouring town where we had a backyard with way more plantable space, I tried to plant some flowers and vegetables to little success. One reason sure were the two big spruce trees that did not only throw a lot of shade on our garden but also spread their roots through most of it.
One thing I still remember from that time is a school project where my whole class got pumpkin seedlings to grow. Mine started alright and I was very excited to grow my very own pumpkins! Then, as far as I remember, It more or less just died suddenly. In reality that was probably due to child me forgetting to water it or something to that effect.
A few years later, one of our neighbours’ pumpkin plants made it through the wood fence and grew on our compost. That one grew a nice little pumpkin on its own, without needing any care.
Gardening to me is just one of these activities – and if you know me IRL you might have heard me talk about this – that give me great pleasure, but I’m just not too good at. Maybe that gives me enough drive to eventually become a skilled gardener, but I think that’s beside the point. What is more important to me is that I enjoy doing it and that it connects me to the people around me.
I have fond memories of caring for my small plot with my late Nan, who is infamous in her part of the family for plucking out stinging nettle with her bare hands while explaining that it prevents rheumatism. Just after I started writing this text right here, I visited my grandma and we talked about – among other things – one of the plants in her garden whose smell I liked. A few days later I got around to visit her again, this time with a pot to get an offshoot.
Two years ago, I was delighted when I found out about Open Source Seeds and discussed it with friends. Making Seed Balls with seeds of endangered local wild flowers and spreading them by the wayside was very fun together, too. Since I bought way too much clay, maybe I should do that again sometime…
As far as “regular” gardening goes, I’m not very active currently. There is a small strip of green in front of my flats windows, but it’s mostly there to have a little space between the parking lot and the house and everything on that strip gets mowed regularly. That includes the flowers and peas I tried growing there. I could talk to the property management, but I’m not really motivated enough to go through that hassle.
Something that gives me regular moments of joy are my houseplants, and currently the two ginger plants in particular. After I have had them growing for about two years, the last stalk died this winter, so I dug out the two roots I found and put one of them back into the pot in a different spot. When I saw the two small shoots come out of the ground it made my day!
And finally, from the moment I publish this, I will also have a Webgarden greenhouse all of my own! You can find my greenhouse here. A fair warning though: Visiting the greenhouse will produce a good deal of traffic and load a lot of gifs.