From time to time over the past few years I have been moved to consider how much cultural capital is involved in the process of gardening. While most of the committed gardeners I know do use books etc to gather information - there is an element of handed down knowledge which forms a foundation to work from.
A couple of weeks back Ana decided she was going to grow some vegetables this year and as the rest of us are so erratic in our care of growing things she would commit to seeing this through. So on a lovely sunny day we finished clearing out some overgrown corners and went on a shopping expedition. We got all kinds of things to plant and throughout the process I noticed how much there was to learn from her perspective. Things like how far apart to space plants, providing trellis for climbers to grow up, not planting certain things to early, checking for sun. A lot of that information is on the labels of seedlings but I also know it from watching my parents and grandparents garden.
My cleaner is also providing garden labour at the moment - she enjoys gardening but is learning herself so it's a two way process of me showing her how and where to do/plant things and her experimenting.
In the meantime my persistently enthusiastic and green thumbed youngest exercised his growing muscles digging out the root system of a couple of old hebes that we took out.
