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Talkback: Gardening makes you happy

I agree after a few hours in the garden your mind is content, lungs full of fresh air and you acquire that happy satisfied feeling that something has been nutured for the good and betterment of all.
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  • MotherBMotherB Posts: 5
    It's easy to say gardening makes you happy when the sun is shining and plants and crops are giving their all, and there's time to sit and admire your handiwork. But it's the 'getting there' that really makes you glow, in more ways than one! All the hard graft through cold, wet, dreary days clearing and sowing, scraping and painting, digging and hoeing. In your mind's eye you imagine how it will all look when it's finished. Planning, scheming and dreaming. And when it all comes together with an exuberant fanfare of colour and scent you can pat yourself on your back and say, 'I did that.' No wonder gardeners are such happy bunnies!
  • Roy HillRoy Hill Posts: 53
    I wouldn't call me "happy". Happier because of the garden, certainly.



    Gnarled apple trees? How about trading for sorry state specimen brought back to health by vigorous pruning? The obvious fungus has gone. The pruning saw had a good clean-up after the event. The water shoots have been thinned and now summer pruned. It may be a bit before the tree fruits again. The anticipation and optimism may get get me. Next year it will be the largest of the three because all the fruit is out of reach. Someone didn't prune and also bought it grafted onto a rather more vigourous root stock. The tree may yet be turned around, despite the deep fissures in the bark. The delights of an 'inherited' garden. The brambles look like they're going to give a bumper crop. Wait 'n' see.
  • kaycurtiskaycurtis Posts: 111
    Well, I wouldn't say I get lungs of fresh air, I live above the M25 and sandwiched between 2 Railway tracks. I wouldn't be without my garden though it is my space to walk into when I want to.

    My patch to grow from seed and cuttings and to share what I grow with friends and neighbours. I purchased my first gardening book when I was living in a flat in London. My children were 14 and 16 years old before I achieved the goal for a garden but I did it.

    I still have that first book 50 years later and still gardening.
  • I agree that gardening can make one happy and I get a huge thrill from raising new plants from cuttings etc. However as an increasingly arthritic 66 year old with a largish garden I also find it increasingly depressing as I cannot cope with the work and tend to walk around despairingly looking at all the things that need doing but I can't manage. Despite what one might think it is quite difficult to get anyone to weed etc for a reasonable price. Most "professional gardeners" just want to cut lawns once a week and keep hedges in check. When I did get someone in he pulled up one or two plants and broke a window while strimming! Yes I love my garden and getting a new plant I haven't got but it is a burden too.
  • gardeningfanticgardeningfantic Posts: 1,019

    i love gardening and it makes you happy and it also takes you away from all your torubles.. as you wander round dead heading or digging or planting.. your mind is suddenly taken to where you are thinkin about moving that plant in the autumn as it doesnt look quite right there.. or that you will change the colour scheme next year and gor for plants that wow y and impact out.. or that the borders need to be bigger because you cant get the plants you have just bought or or  grown from your cuttings and need to go in.. and you have no room left.

    and then wanders off to think oooh! must take cuttings or collect those seed heads and grow some more of those next year as i like themimage

    then stop to have chat with the lady who has just stopped to admire your garden and buy few plants you have for sale.... as you grew far too many this year again... and talk gardening and all things plants and nature for a good half hour.. before you get back to it.. before finding yourself thinkg "oh could do with a cuppa" and head off to make one then wander back to your favourite bench to sit and admire your handywork.. and smile as you enjoy the flowers and buzz of bees and birds singing.image

    or is that just meimage i found it a complete healer when dealing with my husbands cancer.. it as only place i could go to forget it for just an hour or two.

  • PalustrisPalustris Posts: 4,307

    What you like doing is what makes you happy. Gardening to a large extent is outside housework. Grass cutting=vacuum cleaning; weeding =- dusting and so on. Who would claim that housework makes one happy except for some of these people with OCD or close to it?

    Being out side is a pleasure, but gardening?........................not so sure myself.

     

    And before you jump on me if there was a thingy for tongue in cheek I would use it!

  • sarahfordsarahford Posts: 8

    I agree.  Gardening is productive (most of the time) and sometimes a challenge (we all need a challenge sometimes), and I agree with ArtWorks that we nurture.  HOwever, I can never just sit and enjoy with a cup of tea (or glass of wine, depending on the time of day).  Just as I get settled, I see some deadheading or a weed that I just HAVE to get up and see to.

  • Val40Val40 Posts: 1,377

    I have to agree with Linda. Always loved gardening and enjoyed changing the design of mine many times over the years.  However, I can now be reduced to tears when I find there are things I used to do that I can no longer manage and have to rely on a family member to do it for me, when they have time. 

    That doesn't mean that I would want to be without my garden and have just metioned to another poster that I met an elderly couple this week who, sadly, were contemplating moving into a retirement complex as their garden, even with a gardener, had just become too much for them.  I hope I never have to do that.

  • granmagranma Posts: 1,933

    sarahford , you have said it all , and it doesnt stop with your own garden either!

    I go to my daughter and sons , I  find it impossible to JUST walk around the garden . I dead head there too , my son who is 150 miles away tells me many a time he wishes I lived nearer- but Im glad that I dont  as Id never get my own done! 

    But yes gardening does make me happy - my only moan is that now Im getting older I cant bend as good , I can't lift too good and when I need to get up from my knees after weeding borders I have to kneewalk to the washing line post to pull myself up whilst checking round that nobody is watching me - mainly my husband who thinks Im crackers- his theory is that if one cant get up from ones kneas then why get down on them in the first place !? and I answer him with " only a gardener would know THAT answer  as  I'm sure many on here knows what I mean ! 

  • I love gardening, the pleasure of seeing the results of growing plants from seeds and the development throughout the year enthralls me. I was a legal secretary, but following the birth of my son, and having taken some time out to be a mummy, I am setting up my own garden maintenance company to fit in with my son to still have as much time with my son as possible and to enable me to fit in with my son's nursery and school hours as he grows.
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