Gardening Epiphany

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You’d think, wouldn’t you, that with my dad being a mad-keen gardener for as long as I can remember, that he would have passed his love of the garden onto me as I was growing up.

Not so.

I don’t remember ever helping him in the garden as a child. Maybe I did and I’ve forgotten, but the only thing I can ever remember doing is planting an apple pip and it grew into a tree that dad planted at the side of the lawn.

Our garden was lovely, but to me it was just a play area. I had a swing, and grass, and that’s all that concerned me! As I got older, the garden became even less important.

Then when I was 20, I got married. We moved into a house that needed a lot doing to it – both inside and out. Naturally, the inside took priority and we painstakingly did it up, and as we were always on a tight budget, the garden was only just kept ticking over by clearing it very slowly and digging it over occasionally. It was a huge square of soil for several years.

While this was happening, our first daughter came along, and when she started toddling, my kind dad paid for a large patio and lawn to be put down so that she’d have somewhere safe to play. He planted some shrubs and a tree or two for us, then left us to it.

That’s when I realised I didn’t like gardening. I kept it tidy and occasionally planted something but it was a big chore, one that came way down on the list of priorities. I’d do a bit and then lose interest, and when I went back into the house I couldn’t appreciate my labours because our living room was at the front of the house, and even the kitchen sink looked out over the side of the house rather than the garden, so I couldn’t even look at it while I was washing up! My lovely hubby was, unfortunately, even less keen than me and was more interested in the DIY. And our second daughter had come along by that time so my time was taken up again with other priorities

Then, in 2000, we moved house. Our garden in the new house was visible from our living room, which is at the back of the house, and which has patio doors, meaning that the garden was constantly on display while we were inside.

Even then, I still didn’t care too much for gardening – again we had a house that needed a huge amount of work doing, and the garden was the least of our worries, what with a toddler and a ten year old.

While the inside work was being done, over a few years, we did gradually change the garden; we made it more child friendly and cleared a lot of dead and decaying shrubs, removed a huge shrub at the side of the garage which revealed a door and a window that we didn’t know was there, altered the scary shed into something more useable, and gradually improved the area. But it wasn’t really gardening.

But one lovely day in early summer, maybe six or seven years ago, I was sitting cross-legged on the path, trowelling the earth in the rockery in preparation for planting a little something, when … BAM! I suddenly realised I was enjoying myself. It was a glorious day, the sun was shining, the birds were singing, the breeze was whispering through the trees, and it was so very peaceful.

I was happy.

From that very moment on I turned into a keen gardener. It was that sudden and I’ll never, ever forget it.

Magical.

• 16 Jun, 2010
• 6 likes

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