I've been curious for a while as to how many of you actually like gardening. Do you garden? Would you garden if you had the time or the space? If you don't garden yourself, do you like other people's gardens?

-- Anonymous, November 04, 1999

Answers

I hate the outdoors. No, wait. Let me rephrase: I love the outdoors - from a safe, comfortable distance. I want to protect and preserve nature - I just don't want to have to go out into nature to do it. I know trees and plants are important but. . . uh, bugs, dirt, heat, sunlight, bugs, dirt. . did I mention bugs?

My idea of a perfect garden is nothing but English ivy everywhere. Bingo! No mowing, no mulching, no bulb wrangling. I mean, I like tulips but that's why there are flower stores.

I don't even have any plants in my apartment. They would just be neglected and die.

-- Anonymous, November 04, 1999

I hate to scare you, Gabby, but English Ivy is where the bugs hide. I know, because I've seen 'em. The yellow jackets have underground nests under the ivy, and it's full of snails and big ugly beetles. Not to mention mice and probably rats.

-- Anonymous, November 04, 1999

I love other peoples gardens. My friend Dana's mom has the most beautiful yard. Its filled with plants and flowers, and all the windows have those hanging planters (I can't remember what they are called). It is paradise.

I use to garden when I lived in California. My mom had the best backyard. We planted all kinds of roses and such, and I use to lay out in the hammock all day reading and being lazy. Now I live in a apartment with no balcony and no yard. It sucks.

Someday, when we buy our house, I hope to begin gardening again.

-- Anonymous, November 04, 1999

I love to garden, but I mostly do bulbs because the idea just appeals to me. I planted about 300 or so bulbs this fall, mostly tulips but also some daffodils, lilies, bearded iris, dutch iris, crocuses, and some chionodoxa. I am really looking forward to spring, though.

-- Anonymous, November 04, 1999

i love gardens - of all kinds. those wild rampant disheveld ones, the lovely pretty english gardens with all their lavender, the calm japanese gardens with the goldfish ponds and zen rocks, even the ones at versaille with all the perfectly trimmed bushes. but.

i will have a garden when i can afford a gardner.

it's just so much work! and well, i do *love* the smell of dirt. i really enjoy getting my hands into it and having it clump up under my fingernails. i like the sun on my back and wearing a big floppy hat.

for about 15 minutes.

then the romance wears off as my back starts to hurt or i see a huge beetle or a slug comes near me or a bee starts to buzz to close to my arm or i realize that i'd much rather be enjoying the sun with a big fat book and a cushy lounge chair.

plus i have the "thumb of death". yeah. no green thumb. i just kill stuff. i was so proud of myself for successfully re-potting a couple of house plants. they survived (and in fact are still alive a year or so later) but it's not the norm. usually things jus die. i make sure to read the little tab thing about whether they're supposed to be in shade or sun and place them accordingly; i even water according to instructions. but somehow... nothing lives.

so. when i can pay someone to make it all pretty - that's when i will get to enjoy the beauty of plants. until then - i'll make do with the trees.

-- Anonymous, November 04, 1999

I love to garden. This is my first year at it and I guess you could say I went a little overboard. And with a very pleasant outcome, if I do say so myself. My mother has always had flowers around every corner, inside and out. In her yard, there is not one tree that doesn't have a flower bed around it. In all honesty, there really isn't much of her yard that doesn't have flowers. She opened up her own greenhouses for business (a dream she's had for years) this past April. So I went crazy buying all kinds of flowers and I spent a good three months doing nothing but working outside in my flowerbeds. I have lived in my house for almost nine years and never had any desire, until this year, to have one flower. I think it was fear that I would kill them. So when I became a flower freak, my husband ended up spending an enormous amount of time and money on building me flowerbeds around every corner of the house. And I still don't have enough. I can't wait to plant more. Well, I've written a book to answer one simple question that could have been answered by saying "yes". Sorry. Just had to put my two cents worth in. By the way, I am a new reader to your journal and I am addicted. Just had to throw that in there too. Take care.

-- Anonymous, November 04, 1999

Oh, yes, I love to garden. I especially liked to garden when I was a stay-at-home mom (for 10 years) When we moved here (Indiana) I remember having Holly at 5 months old on a blanket in the yard on a warm day in February while I removed sod so that I could have a garden that spring. I used to spend the whole spring outside.... joked that I needed a wife. I was death on weeds in those days....except in the grass of course. I don't care what grows in my grass as long as it's green and not a thistle. I like to grow vegetables, shrubs, flowering trees, perennial and annual flowers, oh, and raspberries. Due to working full time, of course, I have more beds than I can keep up with. Now, I only grow herbs, (basil is the only one I get around to using, unless you count touching and smelling as usage), tomatoes, and a year's supply of red, orange, purple, yellow sweet peppers which I freeze. Sometimes I plant several varieties of leaf lettuce just because I love to see it come up against the dark earth. I hate washing and preparing it for eating though. I am replenishing my perennial beds and have several annual beds I have to fill each year some of which I should change to perennials. You inspired me to start a shade garden which was very nice this year and I discovered caladiums this year too. I think my green thumb is hereditary. My Grandma had it big time, as did my Mom, my siblings, and now my daughter, Heather, in Oakland, has transformed her front yard into a beautiful, flowering refuge from the drab streets nearby. My dream vacation will be a garden tour of England.

-- Anonymous, November 04, 1999

Yes, but my plants become so connected to other events in my life that they inevitably suffer.

Before we (roommate, then boyfriend) moved to midtown, we had a massive container garden on our porch. In addition to the standard ivy and flowers, we planted any seeds that came through the kitchen. I grew potatoes in yogurt cups (when the container splits, the potato is big enough to eat!), corn in industrial soap pails (not terribly successfully from an actual food perspective), peas and cherimoyas and lychees and pumpkins and watermelons and and and. Before and after work I hauled water out; weekends I spent with tweezers and a vengeance waging my own gory miniature war on aphids. Then the boyfriend and I broke up. Other than the maple tree, everything died. I just couldn't bring myself to bring up all the little plants we had "made" together, and apparently, neither could he.

The current houseplants are much adored (I even made them a low frequency mix tape) but distant from my life due to their lowered requirements. Beth, look away: I haven't even moved them into permanent pots. I pay more attention to my hibernating pet garden snails than I do to my plants, a clear indication of where my current allegiances are.

-- Anonymous, November 04, 1999

I like to fantasize about gardening, but that's it. I can spend hours pouring over garden catalougues, or walking around my neighborhood peeking at my neighbor's gardens. I have my perfect garden in my head, but I'm not sure it will ever get out. This summer I planted two pots with dusty miller and pansies and then proceeded to never water them -- ever --. I live in New Mexico, so they promptly died. I find the reality of gardening a little too humdrum. Both my mother and my step-mother LOVE to garden, so I had lots of gardening chores to do as a kid. My step-mother in particular has a wonderful garden. I love to look at it, but I hate to work on it. I've been told things will change as I get older, but I have my doubts. Will grubbing about in the dirt really be more fun at 35 than at 25?

-- Anonymous, November 04, 1999

Mom, I've been saying for years that gardening runs in the family (the female side, that is).

This year my (now ex) boyfriend and I started a garden in my frontyard (yes, in Oakland, right near freeways and BART and all those ghetto birds/copters). He was more interested in the vegetables, and we had a thriving crop of tomatoes, as well as lettuce, peppers, sugar peas, spinach, basil...well, I won't list it all off here.

I enjoyed the veggies, but I really got into the flowers too. I love buying seedlings and nursing them into full bloom. I have spent more money than I care to think about on pots and soil, and our front steps are overflowing now with iceland poppies, "flowering" kale and cabbage, and cosmos (which I started from seed and am thus rather proud of). I've fallen in love with the scent and colors of the sweetpeas that I grow on the trellis fence surrounding the yard, and I'm also enchanted by the delicate nodding heads of the blue and white columbine.

I'm trying bulbs for the first time since I was a little girl in my mommy's (Linda, who posted above, in case anyone missed it) garden, when I planted special dark red bearded iris. This past spring she helped me dig up some of these (they've multiplied quite nicely in the past 20 years) and I brought them back in ziplocks in my carry-on. I had thought they had died a horrible death, as they never bloomed, but just a few weeks ago I noticed not one but TWO new sprouts from them! Yay bulbs! I just spent too much money on more bulbs (tulips, narcissis, daffodils and dutch iris...oh, and hyacinth) and am now chilling some and have planted others. I just hope the slugs don't get them.

We really don't have enough room for all that I want to plant. I have to keep all the expensive, nice plants in the yard, for fear of them getting picked or trampled by the street. My housemates fancy themselves gardeners, too, so I must share our little yard space. I wish I could put bulbs in the shade garden, as that's the only place I could put more stuff. So I buy more pots.

The other autumn garden challenge is figuring out how to harvest seeds from our favorite tomato plants (Green Zebra - tangy and Yummmmy), but I'll post that question over in the Garden Project.

-- Anonymous, November 04, 1999

I would garden if I had a yard that was all mine. I used to have a garden about 25 years ago when I lived in a flat on Henry Street, but since then have not had a yard I could call my own.

-- Anonymous, November 04, 1999

Dammit! Not English ivy too? Et tu, romantic plantage?

Okay - what's the word on kudzu? Bug-filled?

-- Anonymous, November 04, 1999

I don't know about bugs in kudzu; all I know is it grows so fast it practically is a bug. Brick patios are nice.

-- Anonymous, November 04, 1999

We have a *huge* garden every year, but it is all veggies. We got about 700 pounds of potatoes this year.... they should last till May (I hope).

My "flower" garden is woefully pathetic. It is in a visually pleasing spot, but also in a spot where nit-wit drivers back over it in an attempt to turn around in my driveway.

Further up the drive, we moved it a bit, and have made a rock wall along one side which will be filled with flowers. I did move some paper whites over, but that's about all.

I have a peony bush & lilac bush that are both too small to flower. Loads of irises from my in-laws because they planted lots and every few years when they dig & seperate, they give some to us. Some gads that fro some reason didn't flower this year. And I always go to the nursery in the spring to buy flats of pansies & petunias to plant near the house. We tried planting flower seeds indoors early (We're zone 4 or 5), but they all died.

My houseplants are barely straggling along, but I have this one coleus that is years old, in its dozenth incarnation. One year it got so big we named it "Zelda".

Mostly our energies go into the veggie garden which all 5 of us weed every day for a month or so in the summer. At least a half-hour at a time. The plot is about 100 feet by 50 feet. But hey, it free food!

-- Anonymous, November 05, 1999

I love it...I suck at it, but still I 'm out there every year trying my best. recently, I planted the bulbs, about 100 of them. 50 of those have been neatly placed on the back sidewalk by Lex (my dog). I know i know, I tried the dog poop thing! I didn't use enough or maybe I have the only dog who has no problem digging in his own excrement. ugh. I've patiently re planted them, but he apparently had some fun last night digging up 20 or so, and we of course had our first frost overnight (here in the 'burbs of Philly). so what does that mean? my precious bulbs have been exposed to the harsh elements without 4inches of earthly protection! anyway, my point is that I love getting dirty and planning and planting, but something always happens.

-- Anonymous, November 05, 1999

I love to garden. I planted roses this spring and they're still blooming. (I'm in CT). This summer I grew yellow and red tomatoes, cucumbers, watermelon and cantaloupes. Yum!

-- Anonymous, November 05, 1999

I like it. This is the first time I've had my own yard and I got into it in a big way, but it's so much more work than I'd imagined. I've lost some plants because I forgot to water them, and I think there are tasks like pruning and deadheading that would make my plants look better if I were more attentive to them. When my mom visited for the first time, she gave us a lot of good advice about which plants were volunteers we should cut back, and how this tree would grow better if we pruned it.

What I'd like would be to have a gardener help me plan my garden, then come back every month or so to point out things I should be doing. And, it would help to have an automatic sprinkler system so I didn't have to stand around watering.

I just can't get used to the idea of paying someone to do my garden, even if I had the money.

I love other peoples' gardens and enjoy driving around looking at them and getting ideas. I like going to public gardens too.

-- Anonymous, November 05, 1999