What's inside?
Gardening is rewarding!
Sharing knowledge, meeting colleagues, and making friends, the rewards are multi-dimensional.A bunch of carrots plucked by your grandchildren from the veggie garden, an armful of dahlia blooms harvested with your dearest; the rewards compensate you for the time spent nurturing, feeding, watering, bending and weeding. It’s the return you receive for your optimism in planting the tubers and sowing the seeds.
I’ve spent many weeks this year travelling to garden clubs and communities in rural and suburban regions across Victoria, Tasmania, Norfolk Island and New South Wales. The fellowship I observed there was, as they say, ‘top shelf’.Gardening colleagues have always been the closest and dearest friends, well beyond the shared ‘garden’ passion.
Our Ross Garden tour leaders tell us how our groups ‘gel’ in the first days of a garden tour, some making lifelong friendships. Sandra and I have experienced this phenomenon first hand over the decades we have been travelling. It’s one of the great pleasures of our touring.
My story on Higo camellias in this issue, highlights special friendships. How two samurai in 18th Century Japan, would drink tea in a tiny tea house admiring their prized rare camellias they had each hybridised, before they set off into battle for the Shogun, facing certain death; a special friendship right there.Many rewards, many reasons to keep gardening, but the most important reward is your own mental health. Gardening is such a positive and uplifting endeavour.