Gardening

Gardening is one of the most popular pastimes known to man, you only need to drive past your average gardening center on a sunny Sunday morning to see just how many people are busy buying their seeds and plants, shrubs and fertilizer. Turn on the television and gardening programs are probably surpassed only in number by cookery programs (which, incidentally, often tell you how to cook the things you’ve grown in the garden!)There’s nothing quite like a well kept garden to make you smile and make a home look loved is there? A well manicured lawn really says something about the home owner doesn’t it:

• They are proud of their home and want it to be perfect at all times - or
• They have nothing better to do with their time - or
• They have pots of money and can afford to pay a professional gardener

Okay, maybe that’s a little bit unfair, but we all know somebody who fits the bill don’t we?

Gardening Style

Gardeners come in many different shapes and sizes, ages and styles, but there is one thing which every "real" gardener likes to do, and that’s to imprint their own sense of style on their garden ("real" gardeners refer to those who have a real passion for their gardens and has nothing to do with full time occupations or qualifications). Some people have a passion for flowers, wild flower gardens which look wild and unkempt but are actually carefully planned and executed or neat rose gardens with not a thorn out of place and neatly trimmed borders and hedges. Gardening really does give one the chance to express oneself in a unique way.

Kitchen Gardening

These days more and more people are turning towards their gardens as a way of filling their larders. This can be for a variety of different reasons, the price of food has risen dramatically at a time when many people have seen their incomes take a nose-dive in the other direction, but also more and more people want to eat food which tastes good. So much of the fruit and vegetables which are commercially grown today are so full of pesticides and plastic looking, that people have forgotten what home grown veggies can do for you. There’s nothing quite like the taste of freshly dug up potatoes, or dirty carrots, carrots in the grocery store all look exactly the same and have been washed so well that half of the flavour has disappeared with the dirt. No wonder many gardeners are setting aside some of their land to grow their own.

We plant the seeds nature grows the seeds we eat the seeds, that’s just exactly how it ought to be.

Concrete Gardening

Over the past few decades it appeared to be trendy to use concrete or gravel and cover up gardens, making them easy to sweep clean and not cause too much work, with the odd potted plant thrown in for good measure. Fortunately this trend seems to be passed now with many people once again digging up the stones and getting back to grass roots. This trend was actually blamed for increased flooding; after all, gardens are a great way to soak up the rain instead of merely sending the water running off into your neighbors.