Why does it seem to take some courage, a little “gumption”, to stand up amongst the crowd and say “I’m a gardener”? Even if you feel as though you were born to garden and be a gardener, admitting it to others seems difficult.
Why?
I think it is because once someone says “I am a gardener”, others, especially those who don’t regularly garden, suddenly have expectations that everything the gardener plants grows. And we know it doesn’t. Expectations that the self-proclaimed gardener’s gardens will be perfect, ready for the cover of “name that glossy gardening magazine”, and we know they won’t be. Expectations that the gardener will know about all plants and how to grow them. And we know they won’t.
But they’ll still be a gardener! They’ll be like all of us gardeners. In love with gardening and plants, willing to try to grow a plant, accepting and understanding that no garden is perfect, and eager to find out about any plants we don’t know anything about!
We have several bloggers who responded to an earlier post about What Makes A Gardener with their own blog post to proclaim “Yes, I am a gardener”.
I salute them all with this round up post with links to their answers.
Leslie at Growing a Garden In Davis
Colleen at In the Garden Online
Gardenmomma at Down My Garden Path
Genie The Inadvertent Gardener
And Stuart for providing instructions on how to become a gardener.
Thanks all!
(If you posted in response to “What Makes A Gardener” and I missed you, please let me know and I’ll add you to the list.)
gardenmomma (Chris) says
Sweet! I have arrived! I feel like I just got published…or something. Happy days to all you gardeners out there. Thanks, Carol!
Naturegirl says
Gardening is a personal expression as is art!
Anonymous says
Hi Carol!
Just wanted to remind you about my post on the topic. Thanks so much for posting the round-up — I’m looking forward to seeing what some of the other gardeners who I’d missed the first time around have to say!
Thanks,
Genie
The Inadvertent Gardener
Carol Michel says
Genie, sorry about that! You are added to the list now. Everyone go back and read Genie’s post!
Annie in Austin says
The posts are so much fun to read! Thanks for the compilation, Carol.
Annie at the Transplantable Rose