Gardening Rellys

Hi Gillian, What fascinating Photos. At 84 I'm not so far away from those days We used to grow plants in lines from seed and spend the summer hoeing and weeding them. This whole Nursery was dug by spade from old pasture. We only bought a Rotovator after the land had all been turned..

VERY COOL blog and wonderful old photos, Gillian!
You are so lucky to have this connection with your ancestors.
I really like the hop surname, hubby will get a kick out of that. We recently discovered his greatgrandfather (i think) was a blacksmith, very funny to someone named Smith.
Most of my family were shopkeepers and religious fanatics!
It's amazing I turned out anywhere near normal : )

~what's wrong with shopkeepers and religious fanatics~i've got some of them in my ancestry too!

Gillian ~
Thanks for this interesting blog with great photos. Are you able to give any approximate dates, please ?
Interesting to read the reminiscences by Poaannua. :o)

I have many shopkeepers and religious fanatics also. Even had someone that was a Grandmaster of the Oddfellow Society!

Absolutely nothing Arlene, but I say you have to be a little unusual to work those kind of LONG hours shopkeepers do, and as for religious fanatics, well everyone has their own opinions but "boy o boy" my family was really out there! It has become quite a joke. : )
Of course you could just be like me and pride yourself on being strange and unusual and "out there", after all I'm just a "hippy" who got old! LOL

~me too!~

Marvellous! Many Thanks for sharing these fascinating pics!

~ and congrats on finding another word which rhymes with wellies. :o)

Lovely pics Gillian. I was born in Kent so have seen the hop farms with their oast houses. I used to have a friend whose dad owned a hop farm so I have spent time on one. Love the smell! Ah, the memories of bygone days!
Oddly, in reverse to your story I have relatives in Ontario!

In Kent, quite near to where we used to live, there's a non-working Hop Farm where they have set up a museum and display of old photos like yours - tools and other artefacts to do with hops and Oast houses - clothes on models, as well.

Did you know that at hop-picking time, the Londoners used to come down and live in small shed-like buildings while they cut the hops down?

I don't think there are any working oasts left, they have all been turned into luxury homes.

Thanks for reminding me of some of the good things about living there - for 34 years!.

~saw all the hops at the Guinness factory~ fIrst time we had seen them~and absolutely love the look of the oast houses~sad they are not in use anymore!

Really interesting blog, must be honest i know very little about my ancestry, my nan and great uncle were very keen gardeners, it was them that got me into gardening at the age of 4, i will never forget the way i felt in my nans garden, she always had such beautiful flowers, the red roses everywhere and pink hollyhocks always stand out in my mind and remind me of her. My great uncle Ted, was rather unusual to say the least, but such a lovely man, he kind of took over on my gardening traing when my nan died, he had a fetish about garden knomes and little plaster statues, he used to make them, he must have had thousands of moulds, and he was really good at it, but the thing was, he always used to stick these little movable plasic googly eyes on them,lol i remeber having at least 100 on glass shelves when i was little lol - suprised they did'nt give me nightmeres really. so although i do have greenfingers in the blood, - not quite on the same level lol

Too bad you don't have photos, they sound really kind of creepy!

The last photo would have been from around 1910, the others around 1870.

Hubby was very impressed with your families business and name also. He has always had a big interest in good beer, used to brew his own at one time and was once a member of the Royal Society for the Preservation of Beer from the Wood. Don't even know of it still exist! : )

Sounds like an extremely worthwhile organisation to be a member of! I've never brewed beer, but we used to make wine in our airing cupboard, which would periodically explode out of the carboy and cover any clothing in there!

O dear, Umm I would hazard a guess that you were not doing it correctly! : ) Cause I don't think that is supposed to happen!!!l I won't go into all the massive failures we had when we first were getting the hang of it, take up to much space.lol

Ooops, Gillian!

I think the fermentation was a little too vigorous sometimes, liquid would spurt out of the little bendy glass tube at the top! I used to like making the ones with raisins in so you could watch them going up and down.

~i used to make ginger beer and it was stored in my mums outhouse~the corks used to blow off regurlarly!
We used to make a lot of home made wine in the 70s ~from elderberries and parnips etc~it wasn't bad either!

It's interesting to trace your ancestors. I've been doing it on and off since the 1970s and gone back a long way.

I loved looking at your photos. I like all old photos.

What a fascinating blog, no wonder it has brought about such a lovely thread. I love hearing about people's gardening backgrounds and their experiences from the past.
I don't know where my parents got their love of gardening from, my paternal grandparents had a large garden with three very different lawned areas, half of the garden was made over to vegetable gardening with a large budgerigar aviary at the far end whereas mt maternal grandparents had a small back yard with a narrow strip of grass bordered by flower beds and an allotment about ten minutes walk away.
I remember my parents keeping chickens in the garden in the early fifties, there were four who were given the same names as us. Lol.
My father's interest was mainly in garden design and he had a great love of roses but my mother is a keen plantswoman. I think my influence has killed off the interest in gardening in the next generation, neither of my children show any inclination to get their fingers dirty yet, but I live in hope!

Really enjoying reading about people's early memories of gardening. Thanks for sharing! Not sure about naming chickens after your children but probably better than the other way round.
None of my children are interested in gardening but all love the outdoors, camping, hiking etc. and have a great love of nature, so maybe one day...

I love your pictures, so nice to know where your family comes from - the roots, as it were!

Fantastic photos and what a grand line to follow in ancestry. We are all pioneers and ranchers after crossing the pond long ago. These photos really add a richness to the history of your people. Wonderful. Thanks for sharing this.