Hive Garden Newsletter: COMMENT EDITION (YOU CAN WIN HIVE!)🐌 MARCH 3RD 2022🍊👩‍🌾

My first garden was my grandmother's. She had been an actual farmer, born in 1911 to a Black sharecropping family in Collin County, Texas. She felt it was important that her grandchildren learn how to work the soil and learn how to grow food, so we spent a lot of time doing just that.

What I didn't know was that in the front of the house, the neighborhood was descending into the horrors of the crack cocaine epidemic. This was Grandmother's contribution to us needing to have an outdoor life that was sheltered from the foolishness that would destroy the lives of nearly all of my peers. Instead, we grew up growing nasturtiums, geraniums, roses, tomatoes, potatoes, onions, strawberries, blackberries, apples, and even the occasional bell pepper (although the climate is really too cool here for peppers). I learned how to trim hedges and trees and how to dig out invasive plants and weed the soil. This also gave me the beginning of my now life-long love of nature and the outdoors, and started me as a forager, because blackberries can be found all over Northern California, and arbutus strawberry trees, ornamental plums, fig trees, currant bushes, and the occasional peach tree grow on sidewalks and in the parks!

Fast forward all these years; I now have Grandmother's old backyard, and the soil is exhausted of calcium as I found out last year ... but it is nothing that some dry milk, old Tums that Grandmother left behind, and some oatmeal won't fix so I can grow her favorite things: organic tomatoes. "These taste like tomatoes are supposed to taste like!" she said to me when I presented her my first crop as a teenager. It had been hard, all those years in the big city, and with the commodification of food ... but, something that had brought her a living and brought her grandchildren a safe space at last had made full circle ... and the calcium of those old Tums will yet support one more crop of her favorite things.

This is a great initiative, you are doing amazing 😊

So the first garden I saw was my mother's, she grew bananas, plantains, cassava, vegetables, guavas amongst other things, and my first thought was how stressful and unnecessary it was since we could buy all these things in the market.

Years later and inflation, I totally appreciate what she did because we are still enjoying all she grows.

Also, I have learned how to grow certain things due to that garden.

Nice one and thanks for sharing.. but the issue of garden you sad , actually the garden I remembered ever going to is a fruit a fruit garden where a lot of fruit were planted and this makes me able to see different kinds of fruit and the names which they are called and their species. It was a nice one tho and a great experience

What was the first garden you remember, and what impact did it have on you?

Well, I must say, I started my roof top garden to get some fresh flowers for our daily worship to God. Before that, I would go to the market and buy flowers for 10 rupees - begging for some more as he would give max 10 - 15 flowers. I was spending time for that and also some fuel. The time, the money was not worth because I knew the flowers were not fresh. So I decided to plant a few trees on the roof top and then you know the impact - It's just growing non-stop.

Oh my Buddha - wine please - that was quite the emotional journey!! 🌿

https://peakd.com/hive-140635/@artemislives/dutch-volkstuin-circa-1967-my-first-garden-memories

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My first garden I remember is when I was little, my mum had a small garden filled with vegetables. From the bush clearing to planting and harvesting was so fun. The garden was not big, so it was not so stressful to make long ridges I was not doing much work though as a child maybe it was so much work for my mum. After school we always check the garden and remove weeds. We could water it and apply manure every three days.
The vegetables (pumpkin, waterleaf, eggplant,okro and bell pepper), we even planted maize. It did so well, the greenish color always makes it beautiful.
The best part of it was the harvest period, we always had veggies as our side dish. I could always hum while eating the maize it was delicious.

My first garden was my grandmother's. I remember being around 5 or 6 years old and planting belenes (which I now understand are impatiens) and gallos in the chicken and swan shaped planters on her front porch. As my grandmother could no longer get down on her knees to reach the soil, she would sit next to me as I pulled out weeds in the backyard, "No not that one!" she would tell me in Spanish. I didn't find pulling out weeds a chore. It was more like an adventure. Although my grandparents only lived a few blocks away, it was like exploring an entirely new world full of different bugs and even strange rocks in the soil (which I now know were pieces of fossil wood known as jet).
My grandpa would put me to plant cucumbers, tomatoes which I didn't like at the time, jalapeños, and of course some cilantro (which still tastes of soap to me) for the guacamole and tacos. Although I didn't like or couldn't eat most of what I helped cultivate, it had a tremendous impact on me! I began to help out in my own garden, learning more and more every year and eventually taking over management of the garden entirely.
A manager I once worked with said, "I never made my kids pull out weeds because I didn't want to scare them away from gardening, and look now! They're still not interested!"
I think that was a mistake. You have to get in there and get your hands dirty! I am very grateful to my grandparents for introducing me to the world of gardening. I miss them.

My first garden was my parents and is the place where I was born. It was in Portsmouth, England and, though it wasn't large, it certainly was interesting. My Dad bred goldfish outside in big ponds and I loved to play with my Action Man figures in them. That was back when they had real metal parts and the diver suit was my favourite. In between the pnds, we had vegetables and flowers. Looking back, I can see hw tiny it was but to a young boy, it was huge.

Behind our house were the mudflats of the estuary where we used to play and forage and take our dog for guge walks. Within sight of the garden was a railway bridge where the kids used to gather and the train drivers would unleash a cloud of steam and a long whistle as they drove underneath, covering us kids in steam, soot and fun.

Over here, I shared the story of the first garden I remember from birth and how it shaped my understanding of reality. I'll be glad to have around to read through. Thanks in advance. ❤️❤️

https://peakd.com/hive-140635/@iskafan/what-is-the-first-garden-you-remember-and-what-impact-did-it-have-on-you

My first garden, what a memorable proposal, the first one was my mother's garden. In a house in the area of Barlovento in Venezuela, the climate was very warm and there she planted red, white and pink roses in the center of the garden.

She had two cobblestones (stones piled up) on the sides of the roses, there she placed the clothes she washed, it was an ancestral trick to whiten them, taking advantage of the sun, she had tobos of soap in panela and every so often she sprayed that potion to the clothes so that they would be very white, surprising the pupils of the shining and paradisiacal fragrance of clean that thing that evokes the most natural of the natural, it is pine, it is sun, it is sky, it is air. It was indescribable.

That garden was taken care of by my uncle, all around the garden there were bushes that made a picture and the leaves of those bushes I remember that they were green with yellow spots, by the way, most of them, and the others with green spots. In the east of the garden there was a corridor delimited with stones that led to a cocoa plantation that was at the back, wait I just remembered, it was not only cocoa that was in that yard, there were bananas, cambures and red pears, delicious fruits with a refreshing acid that only occurred in that area for the convenience of the climate.

Finally, from that courtyard there was a beautiful tree and you know what? It was there where the people gathered during the main week of the year to burn Judas Iscariot, it was one of the largest trees in town, emblematic and that is why the custom of worshiping religion that mounts us to punish betrayal.
This was an amazing garden, with roses, stones, lots of grass and shrubs, she always took care of it and watered it, it was part of her life, it was very natural to find roses wherever she went and take them with her to show off their splendor in that sacred temple, built by her love for plants.

Oh this could be one whole post @riverflows - except I have NO photos (or sound effects)

My first memory is of my grandfather and his garden. We would visit him during the holidays. He had one of those magnificent old homes with an equally magnificent garden. It was beautifully manicured. He had rolling lawns. Perfect. Gardens overflowing with every imaginable colour and variety of flower and huge trees. No. Not huge. GINORMOUS! Us kids would play for hours in the garden. Only now do I realize how much time and hard work he put into keeping that garden so perfectly manicured! He had rhubarb - which I have never been able to grow - and would make the best stewed rhubarb with cream or ice-cream. Or both. In their season he had a lovely grape arbour that we would play under, while we picked bunches and bunches of katorba grapes. My favourite time of the day in my Grandpa's garden was 11 o'clock every morning. He would make us rooibos and he would have black coffee. Then we would sit under the vine on his little verandah nibbling ginger cookies (and stealing his treacle sugar). While Grandpa whistled for the wild birds. He had a particular whistle just for them. And they would come at 11am sharp twittering in response as they pecked at the food he put out for them. Special memory. Remember @craigcryptoking?

My first garden was in 1977 in our little rented house on the foot of Mt. Sugarloaf. It was mainly flowers, but I don't remember what.

I’ve always been more than a little odd; strange you know? (If you say weird, I’ll forgive you, since I know you mean “nice-weird”).

So, on one bright African day, long, long, looooonggg….ago, a wondrous idea popped into my kiddie-head, I was about eight-years-old at the time and I decided to build a magnificent science fiction inspired city in my backyard. At the time, my parents were renovating our house and I “stole” an old door for the purpose. Oh, the memory of those imaginings! I was utterly possessed, running about repurposing various household items, such as wine glasses, and turning them into domed spaceships and bulbous, translucent “skyscrapers”.

I worked really hard on the project too (for a kid that is) and badgered everyone in my family, senseless, for “gifts” that I could mold to my fantasy. I used mason jars, trimmed edges of feather dusters (sprayed silver of course), slivers of mirrors, shiny pebbles, cardboard cereal boxes (and any other type), mounds of paper-mâché and even some cement that the friendly workmen, working on our house helped me spread onto my “door” (which I’d set out on a pair of trellises). Sublime, fun!

I had glorious rivers (with real water, promise) running (not really) over blue painted “pools”. Relatively sturdy fantastical buildings that only a child could fashion, several stick-and-wire men/women/children (I have no idea why, but no kid-SicFi city would be complete without them, right?”).

…and I thought I’d done an excellent job and invited my family to the inauguration “ball”, for which I’d laid out cookies and lemonade (promise).

Everyone oohed and aahed and treated me like the utterly spoiled brat that I was.

But, then…

My grandfather, who is still my best-ever-person-in-the-universe (even though he's long departed), said.
“Where are the flowers, where are the trees, my girl. Where?”

…and that’s how it began - my mystical, magical, initiation into the world of green.

I spent hours, days, really, “landscaping” my door, and planting a variety of seeds and cuttings all over the damn place. It was mud-streaking joy, I’ll tell you that.

But, when the first tiny, fragile leaves began poking their noses out of that soil, true wonder took root, the exhilarating excitement of true love…of a purpose found.

…and I’ve been in a fantastically rewarding, amazing relationship ever since. (Drippy love story, I know, but it’s true, cross my heart).

It took me some time, but here I am:
https://peakd.com/hive-140635/@traisto/the-first-garden-i-remember-and-my-first-collage-in-photoshop

I loooved reading all the stories so much!!!