More and more people are spitting into a little tube, mailing the tube filled with their spittle to a DNA lab, and then eagerly awaiting a report to show them, by percentages, where their ancestors most likely came from.
But does that knowledge help them know how much of a gardener they are? Probably not.
That’s why I’ve come up with an assessment tool anyone can use to find out what percent gardener they are, and it doesn’t involve spitting, mailing, or waiting.
All you have to do is go through my simple assessment tool.
For each statement below, give yourself up to 10 points based on how close it comes to describing you.
Give yourself 10 points if the statement exactly describes you.
Give yourself 0 points if it doesn’t describe you at all.
Give yourself 5 points if you think it doesn’t describe you now but it could someday.
- You think a pleasant day is one that ends with dirt under your fingernails, mud on your jeans, a green stain across your forehead, and a big grin on your face. In other words, a day you’ve spent gardening.
- Whenever you go to a big box store, you always head straight to the gardening section, even in the middle of winter when it consists of a few gardening tools marked down to get them out of the way to make room for more holiday decorations.
- You receive more than ten seed catalogs in the mail each year. Yes, bulb catalogs count, too.
- Your personal library looks like a home for lost gardening books, with gardening books on all the shelves and overflow gardening books teetering in piles by your favorite chair.
- When you are with friends and someone sees a flower they don’t know the name of they automatically ask you what it is called, and you know the name. If you don’t know the name you are determined to find out.
- If the owners of your local greenhouse don’t see you on their opening day in the spring, they call you to see if you are sick. You are also friends with them on Facebook.
- You plan your vacations around visiting gardens.
- You belong to at least one garden club, plant society, or other horticulturally related organization.
- No one leaves your garden without a passalong plant.
- You are proud to be called the crazy gardening lady (or gentleman) of your neighborhood.
Add up your points and it will be a number between 0 and 100. That’s what percent gardener you are!
I am only 95%, because I don't have a local greenhouse to patronize. But I think that could happen someday, so I gave myself the 5 points for that. And I'm not sure everyone who leaves my garden has a passalong plant, but surely everyone who wants one leaves with one, so I gave myself the full 10 points.
I'll have to go with a 99%. I am guilty on all 10 accounts, but took away a point because not everyone who comes to my garden goes home with a pass along plant; however, I do think gardening 24/7 and am known as the gardening guru of the neighborhood!
Guilty on all counts. 100% gardener to the obsessed core.
100%, Since my job was to work at a garden center for almost 30 year, they did not need to call me because I was there and had had been for quite awhile so I gave myself the 10 points!Nothing better than dirt under the nails, and stains on the knees, can't wait till the snow melts and the blooming begins!
I would say 110% because if they don't want the pass along plant I would find a way to sneak it into their car anyway!! Like the post and glad to know I am not alone!!
I'm a 95%. My garden center knows my name but has never called me. I do have a friend that haunts the local nurseries and calls when she finds something she thinks I must have or if there is an unpublished sale she runs into.
One hundred percent I'm afraid, but you already knew that. ~~Dee
Well, I'm only at 60%. BUT I'm working on it! I'd be thrilled if my favorite nursery called me periodically to ask if I'm alright.
Yep, recognise myself there.100% gardening nerd. At the last count I had 397 gardening books.
85% but I can see that eventually increasing to 100%!