Why? Why do you garden?

i have notice that the bugs dont nearly bother me since ive been planting
i have a huge sunflower patch and i think they know i gave it to them
and i grow my babys food, i likem homegrowm

 

I garden because I love the surprise when you peep out of the window and there are suddenly red strawberries! I live in the middle of a city, so I have strawbeeries, some kind of really spicy salad, tomatos and sunflowers on my windowboards in the 4th floor yay! And of course these boxes of earth resemble my garden that I used to have around when I lived with my family. We had a plum tree, two apple trees (one is my age, my grandpa planted it for me) and tons of different berries! ooooo I loved that place!

 

I love the question, and agree with most of the answers.
You know, yes that too, that too, that too.

But I don't really know why.
I love it so much that I can't really stop.
I've lived in a half dozen states as an adult, and would rather go back to previous places to see the trees I planted, than to see the people I knew there.

A row of maple trees 300 feet long, that I planted when I opened a bag of "grass clippings" that I had swiped in an alley to use as mulch -- and discovered instead maple seeds that had just sprouted. They're 25 feet tall now. I just wish I had the courage to go back there and prune them -- they could use a little bit of trimming -- but it's a small cul-du-sac, and a stranger cutting trees might look strange.

Lots of other trees that I dug out of the foundation plantings, and moved to the boulevard -- now tall and straight, or the ones in front of my house now that are 12 inches tall -- hackberry's.

A row of lilac bushes that I swiped from an abandoned farmstead, and planted as a fence row, in soil that had been top soil stripped down to pure sand --- 10 feet tall and gathering new top soil around it's roots.

Lots more.


Why?
I love it.
It's obsession.
It's meditation.
It's what I do.
My gandpas and grandma's did it.
My brother and I did it when we were boys -- planting and eating, but no weeding.

Like I say, It's a great question.

 

Food, it is nice to know where your food came from, and that there is NO chemicals in it. (If you garden organically.)

Teaching children about the earth. My children loved to garden when they were little. Sage still does (she's four) the others are a bit too cool to do it now. Sage started planting when she was about 8 months old. (Had to stop her from eating the weeds and the seeds and the dirt and the plants.....)

Creation and nurturing. It is a lot like being a mother.

It looks pretty.

Exercise.

I think it is spiritually good. You are in CONTACT with the Earth, and you are helping the earth.

 

Because it's creative, and I love working outdoors, being surrounded with flowers and plants, it's like my own bit of nature

 

I find it therapeutic and relaxing. I feel like I've accomplished something after spending time weeding, planting, etc.
I like knowing that my veggies are organic.

It's just very satisfying. These days people are too separated from nature and the sources of their foods. It's much nicer to get your food from a garden than a supermarket.

 

Why garden?

I like to be one with the mother.

I want to ensure that I always have dirt under my nails.

Growing, alive, green stuff is cool.

To pluck a salad from the yard is the best.

I provide over half of my families food from the land and I want to do better than that.

 

I garden because I like to play in the dirt, I know exactly where my food came from & how it was raised, and it helps me feel in tune with the earth.

 

I garden for all the reasons posted already. The number one reason for me would have to be I like knowing where my food is coming from.

 

kitchen gardening demands the simple pleasure of devotion.


lovely thread!
child from the old forums.

 

I garden because my dad does, but he's getting older and needs help. I've grown to love doing it. We don't do much vegetable planting, it's all ornamental except for one tomato plant. We used to have huge veggie gardens when I was a little kid, but not now.

I like it because it looks good, makes the neighbors' houses look downright trashy in comparison, lol

I like it because it's fun to get dirty while creating something. Not only creating a beautiful thing, but also nurturing life.

I hate killing the weeds. My dad is almost obcessive compulsive about weeding and hoeing (save the jokes). I say, if there's some bare dirt that gets some light (really not much of that in our gardens), then if something can capitalize on it, why should I stop it, and even worse, kill it?

A picture of my front yard this spring...if I had my digital camera, I'd update this (it's a jungle out there now) but my parents took it on vacation.

 

Thats a lovely front yard Brandon, and its so nice that you help your dad.

I can tell you that when you are a parent and you see your child enjoying something that you also enjoy its a wonderful feeling.

My daughter Sarah lives in Boston and only has a rooftop to garden on, it was a great feeling when she called me and wanted me to tell her how she could grow in containers on her roof, we talk gardening quite a bit now and it has added to our closeness, it is something that she has learned from me that she will have after I'm gone.
I hope you will grow more veggies as the stuff they sell in the stores just seems to get worse and worse...
teepi

 

"Thats a lovely front yard Brandon, and its so nice that you help your dad."

Yea, what she said.

The background on my windows desktop has been a picture of Cream playing at their induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Now it's a picture of your front yard.

 

To me its a hobby, but it also depends on what your gardening and what your hoping to get out of your gardening and your time you put into it, whether its beauty or food, or maybe something else

 

Thanks, dad and teepi, for the compliments. If you are interested, when my parents get back with the digitial camera, i can take some shots of our summer garden in all it's glory and post them.

 

Yes, I'd like that.

 

It's a connection with nature + feels spiritual. Fortunately these days more people are working with nature rather than constantly fighting it. For example understanding the natural habitat of a plant will indicate how it should be cultivated; you're doomed for failure if you plant a sun loving grassland plant in heavy shade or try growing acid lovers on chalk; using homemade organic compost to feed soil + improve structure rather than inorganic fertilisers, not using pesticides, etc.


For me a garden must have an abundance of wildlife- growing a wide variety of plants, both native + non-native, not being obsessively tidy, with compost heap, log pile, pond + your own mini-utopia is possible.

 

I grew all my vegetables from seeds, and now they are thriving and producing vegetables of their own...with seeds in them (so it is amazing to have started it from scratch + watch the evolution. I am proud of them.

 

I garden because it reminds me of the good times me and my Grandfather had together.

R.I.P. Grandpa
I LOVE YOU

 

Lots of great Replys!!

Nothing like slicing a Tomato freshly picked to go on a salad.
Making Chile from Pepper & Tomatoes i canned in the fall.
Green bean cassarole rocks!!
When i first started digging my garden back in 1988 my neighbor was excited because she thought i was digging to put a swimming pool in!! The soil was really poor. it turns out that at the turn of the century people used to bury their trash in their back yards. Lots of broken pottery, bottles etc.
i dug 3 feet deep using a shovel and mixed leaves, grass clippings, sawdust,
and anything else i could find to loosen up the soil. it's only a 25X24 foot plot
but i get so much enjoyment from working on it. My wife sings the green acres song whenever she sees me puttering around in it.