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Some would say things have gone downhill from there. Lol
I remember being 5-6 and picking the heads of Field bindweed flowers and making them stick to my nose by breathing in. I also remember the silky softness the the flower.
I was about nine and I stuck my Dad's tarmac fork through Alison Knight's sandal while trying to dig up my Mum's Lupins.
I started on Blackmoor Golf Club as an assistant to the greenkeeper. The greenkeeper was on holiday the week I started and his first assistant Dave - who was notorious for not wanting to make a decision - asked me to trim the cross ditch on the short par 3 sixth.
Dave wouldn't let me use the strimmer (called the 'Weedy' [an Americanism]) so I set about it with a hook, hand shears and Bulldog Springbok wire rake) it took me three days.
The other's felt sorry for me and one of them came down with the strimmer and took twenty minutes to do what took me a day and finished the job off.
The ditch is the longer length to the right of the path in this Google Map.
My first paid job in the industry was working as a Junior Landscape Technician at an Architects practice in Hull. It was 1989 and I was 16. I think I got paid £60 a week which wasn't actually all that bad as everyone else I knew was on Y.T.S. schemes. I can honestly say I had no interest in gardening at the time but became instantly hooked when I started working alongside a Landscape Architect. He used to give me his rough plans marked up in pencil and felt tips and it was my job to draw them up on tracing paper using technical pens (boo hiss...). I had to stencil the Latin names of plants on to enormous planting plans and I had no idea what the actual plant looked like but I knew the names off by heart.
I covered this in 2007...my childhood garden is still a great source of pleasure and memories.
she taught me to put the higher plants at the back and smallest at the front. it was then my job to weed it etc in the future. i liked it.
a few years later it was 'stihl petrol strimmer' for £5 pocket money. more than an hrs strimming grass on edges , banks , sloping bits to the drive ..........
I had my own greenhouse at 14, and about a 90sq.m. veg plot that my grandfather helped me plant tatties in to start with (plenty of manure...mmmhmmm), and then later all types of peas and beans, radish (the leather jackets were a pain in the backside - constantly squishing then between finger and thumb), turnips, carrots (that kept growing forked and squint because of the stony soil, jerusalem artichokes, lettuce. In the greenhouse I grew several varieties of tomato to start with before favouring gardeners delight fo many years as they were like sweeties to me. Then I brought on loads of seeds for vegetables to be planted out. I experimented with acorns and chestnuts which worked well to start with, before dying at 3 inches tall! I kept it all really well organised and everything was labelled and dated. I also managed to grow successfully a pineapple plant from scoring and dipping the leafy top in a rooting hormone paste an planting.
Outside the greenhouse I had a bin that I used as a water butt but then later decided to put greenwaste in to see if I could make my own liquid fertiliser for my tomatoes. Worked a treat! It had a great pong of it that told me it was good stuff!!
The rest of the garden was made up of lawn, two victoria plum trees, conference pears, and some variety of cooking apple tree. Then we had a bbq area that I partially built myself. Was a bit eager when building a small block wall. Even dug down to put a big foundation in. Bit overengeneered considering it was only to be 3 block on their side high above ground level!
Then when I was 15 I got a job in the local garden centre and worked there weekends and holidays. After that I went to Scottish Agricultural College to study Landscape Management and was self employed from then and did my own work through the holidays...etc etc... I'll not bore any longer.
Suffice is to say I don't think there was any question I was going to have my own business in this industry one day.