All Gardeners Unite!

Good morning to you!
This glorious sunny morning (the fifth in a row, we Dutchies don't know what has hit us!) I would like to share my passion for flowering plants with you all.

Begonia 'Angel' in my tiny garden.

When I was a teenager, I watched my Mum on her knees in her (very large) garden, and I can remember thinking I couldn't see the attraction. At all! Of all the boring things to do!

But when I moved into my first very own house when I was 28, the gardening bug attacked. I looked at the tiny neglected plot in front, and thought I should "do" something with that. So I dug it over, and nicked some wild rosebushes from our local dunes (money was tight. Come to think of it, things haven't changed in that department), and accepted some seedlings from my old downstairs neighbour, and was chuffed to bits when the children of my street voted my flower bed the best.

Then, at 34, I moved into my very first actual house -with-a-garden, and went wild. Amongst the unpacked crates and boxes were dozens of seed trays, the entire house smelled like a greenhouse and family and friends coming round to view the new house were bewildered and asked if all that earth around wasn't bad for my (9 month old) son.
I adored my garden.
But alas. After 27 years the marriage failed and I had to leave my garden behind.

Campanula

And here I am, in a temporary garden, which I inherited from my landlord and is user-friendly (as he complacently informed me when I signed the lease) - meaning filled with evergreen shrubs, two ailing Japanese acers and just day lilies and alchemilla by way of flowers.

I have no funds to spend on my garden to speak of; so what to do with this rather green-on-green greenness?

My solution was pots. For, as I convinced myself, the money spent on flowers in pots is well spent, as I can simply take the pots along when I have to move out again.

Lobelia

So in between all that green (you can just see the lilies and leatherleaf in the photo below left), I have now dotted my flowers.

I have added ferns (I love ferns, they remind me of England) and splashed out on Campanula and Hydrangeas (that last was a bad choice, although looking good. But it needs constant watering; my soil turns out to be parched in that spot).

A friend surprised me with a box of Spanish daisies, which are everywhere.

And yesterday I bought some French pelargoniums to replace the pansies, who are on their last legs by now.

Before work, I take my first cup of herbal tea outside and water my plants, and the world is at peace for a few blissful moments.

And I think that is the essence of gardening for me.

One of the flower boxes

However sad I am, with stuff going on, with the violence in the world, I always recover when I am amongst my plants. They comfort, and bring joy. 

Fuchsia and the violets

Yes, we do have rain, and lots of it usually.

So there you are. Everyone should start to tend a garden, and the world would be at peace. Easy-peasy solution to heal the world :-)

Have a good day (in your garden!)