I used to think the answer to this question would always be “no”. Even before I was a gardener, I was completely ambivalent about gardening. I knew people did it, thought flowers and plants and gardens were pretty, but I was too busy being a teenager to care about doing it myself.
One of the first vegetable gardens I grew was at my mom’s house in Roseneath, just north of Cobourg. I wanted to try to grow some edibles. She didn’t have a vegetable garden on her property, so her next door neighbour borrowed a very beat-up looking roto-tiller from someone else on the street.
“This thing looks like it’s been to Bosnia,” he said dryly.
He tilled a little plot for me in her side yard, which was full-sun, “plot” was the operative word, because anyone who came by said the thing looked like a grave. It wasn’t very big.
I planted cucumbers and beans and maybe something else I don’t remember anymore, but since I didn’t live at the house, I wasn’t the primary caregiver for the plants. Mom was happy to water them for me until I came back to visit, and then I could see how much the plants had grown. I thought that was pretty cool, and not just because as the plants grew, the plot looked less like a place to mourn the dead.
My neighbour where I live now is a gardener. He grows potatoes and peppers, zucchini and tomatoes in his back yard. Whenever I have leftover seedlings or find free plants anywhere, I leave a few on his porch. We talk over the fence about the rabbits eating our zucchini and whether his potato plants are blooming yet. Here’s the weird part: his wife doesn’t like gardens. It’s not that she doesn’t like a particular kind of plant, or that she doesn’t want to put the work into gardening herself…she doesn’t like him gardening. I first encountered her attitude when I was seeding some morning glories at the side of the house. She told me she didn’t like climbing plants, she thought they were weird.
They have a lovely little artemesia and a weeping pea or some sort of pretty tree out front of their house, but she’d prefer to just rip out the landscaping and replace it with more grass for him to mow. I know this because she told me. Last summer I offered him some tomato plants I’d scored for free at Richter’s toward the end of spring and he sheepishly told me he’d have to sneak them in because “[wife] doesn’t like me gardening.” I feel bad for the guy. He works hard, commutes into the city five days a week, and just wants to cultivate a few vegetables in his back yard. My theory is that she just doesn’t like him having something to do without her. So I talk plants and gardens over the fence with him whenever I can. You know how they say that if a person is mean to animals, there’s something psychologically going wrong with them? Well, I think the same thing might be true of people who hate plants and gardens.
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for me gardening goes way beyond “like”. it is an essential part of my identity and walk in life. love your philosophical leanings. I’ve taken my own stab at the subject: http://www.proudlandlandscape.com/blog/2007/03/essential-question-why-garden.html
at any rate, happy gardening.
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