I turned 34 last week. Hardly a milestone I know, but I tend to get reflective no matter what the birthday and this one was no different, save for a brain deprived of sleep by a very cute but very hungry seven-week-old baby boy.
When asked what I might like as a present, my usual reply was…plants. If that sounds like a funny kind of thing for a 34 year old bloke to want, it probably is. But it’s true – other than books, of which I can never get enough, there’s nothing else that takes my fancy quite as much as plants.
This passion for growing things is all a bit baffling to me. I was a kid who grew up playing cricket and footy, who wanted to be a truckie or a pilot, and later an architect, and, when that wasn’t possible, a fiction writer. For me, gardening was a reluctant Saturday chore assigned to me by Mum and Dad. The natural world always interested me (our family camped), but plants in particular held absolutely no interest whatsoever beyond being something you mowed and watered in order to get plenty of zip when bowling a cricket ball.
Mine was a non-gardening childhood, at least in the sense of actually wanting to do it. One of my most vivid memories growing up was the time I tipped a bucket full of hydrochloric acid on some fancy new begonias that Mum had just brought home, thinking the clear liquid was water. I copped a major revving from the old man, who was planning to use the acid to clean the driveway, and to be frank, the experience put me completely off plants for the next ten or fifteen years.
So how did I eventually get into gardening? It’s a question I’m asked often enough, and I can only really suggest a couple of reasons as an answer. For starters, my Mum has always been a keen gardener. She grew up in a market garden at Manly West in Brisbane and inherited a passion for growing things from her Dad, who grew the fattest, juiciest strawberries I’ve ever tasted. It’s the same story for me, I suppose. I don’t know whether the urge to grow plants is genetic or not, but I can tell you that it’s a big part of our family culture. Whether I liked it or not, gardening was a major part of my youth.
The second thing that got me interested was moving into a place of my own. Kylie and I were married in 1998 and we took up residence in a tiny, two-bedroom worker’s cottage in Centenary Heights. Some people called it the gingerbread house. All I knew was that suddenly, I had my own patch of turf to care for and something in me stirred. I had an urge to grow stuff! Didn’t really care what it was, I just wanted to garden.
Our first attempts were dismal. We planted lavender. It carked it. We tried growing seaside daises in the shade. They didn’t flower. We even scattered a whole packet of basil seed in a little pot and wondered why the overcrowded seedlings were stunted and yellow. Yet over time, and armed with greater knowledge, we started to have some success. A backyard vegetable patch based on Permaculture principles was particularly rewarding and I was a bit dumbstruck to learn that on my very first go, I was able to grow tomatoes and broccoli and bucketloads of beans right there in my own backyard. I was, and remain to this day, totally hooked.
Before you start wondering where this week’s column is actually going, let me make my point: gardening is one of the few popular pursuits where people write themselves off before they even get started. I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve heard someone claim to be a “brown thumb” or a “non-gardener” or, worst of all, a “plant killer”.
In reality, there are no green thumbs or brown thumbs. You’re not a plant killer. Plants die of their own accord and if you don’t feel confident, I’d encourage you to simply get stuck in and have a go. Put on your favourite hat or gloves, grab a spade or a packet of seed and go for it. Experiment. Don’t fear the odd mistake. You’ll gain as much experience from your failures as you will from success.
There is though, one thing you need to beware. Give it half a chance and gardening will get under your skin. It got under mine, and I’ve yet to discover a pursuit more deeply satisfying than that of growing plants. Give it a go. All the time and money and sweat you put into your garden will be well and truly repaid.
First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 15th April, 2008
