Am I a gardener?

Carol from May Dreams Gardens has a post on "What makes a gardener?" For Green Thumb Sunday, I thought it would be fun to answer her questions.

1. "Do you consider yourself a gardener? How did you decide you were a gardener?"
Yes, I am a gardener. I realised I was accumulating more and more plants, growing flowers, herbs, plants from seed, rooting various twigs and stems. I never actually "decided" that I was a gardener, it just became obvious after a while.2. "When is the first time you referred to yourself as a gardener? Where and how did you learn to be a gardener?"
I don't really remember when I first refered to myself as a gardener. I got my first plants in Manhatten,NYC more than 30 years ago, when I visited a plant shop. The owner was cutting up little pieces of wandering jew as cuttings, and I asked him what he was doing. We chatted for a while, and he gave me a few cuttings of various plants. That started my house plant craze, where I would get cuttings from friends and aquintances and get free plants. Soon after, I started getting seeds from flowers and planting window boxes. My "garden" soon traveled up the fire escape, and onto the roof, where I planted herbs that I used for cooking. So I started gardening in a New York City apartment, in containers. I learned by doing. I was hooked!

3. "Has anyone ever introduced you to someone else as a gardener?"
Yes, I was know as the plant lady at work, because my office-studio looked like a jungle, with vines and hanging plants and flowers in every empty space! People would give me thier dying or sick plants, and I would nurse it back to health, then give it back, or sometimes they let me keep it.4. "When someone tells you they are a gardener, what image of them does it bring to mind? What do you expect of them?"
I imagine them digging in thier garden, planting seeds in little pots in early spring, maybe some little glass jars with rooting plants. I expect them to have a love of nature and enjoy chatting about plants.


5. "Can a gardener live where there is no place to plant anything, and still remain a gardener?"
YES! Me in the middle of New York Manhatten proves it!6. "What about horticulturalists? Are they a subset of “gardeners” or a whole different group?"
I imagine a horticulturalist is a profesional, a person with lots more knowledge than myself, and knowing all the latin names!

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all the pics above are from my time at Don Bluth Studios, in the mid 90s. My office-studio had a nice large window facing south, so was perfect to grow plants.