What Is Your Earliest Gardening Memory?

didyw

I'll start us off - mine is being given a section of the flower bed and some cornflower seeds. I sowed them and they grew up into a tall thicket (nearly as tall as I was). I loved them!  And a sunflower that grew up as high as the bathroom window.

Hostafan1

mine is walking round to my neighbours house and just gazing at her Livingstone Daises;  Mesembryanthemum criniflorum which was the first botanical name I ever learned at about 10 years old. 

Pete.8

Mine was almost exactly the same as yours.
I was probably about 5yrs and given a small flower bed just by the lounge and I sowed mixed annuals, I was amazed that tiny seeds could produce a beautiful bed of flowering plants in a few months.
The following year my Dad bought me a 3ft heated propagator for the greenhouse, and I've been an enthusiastic gardener ever since.
As a child we used to go on long driving holidays in Europe and I'd always take the 3 volumes of the Readers Digest Encyclopaedia of Gardening as holiday reading - I was about 6-7 yrs old

Fran IOM

Mine was the same as yours @didyw. My father saved a space in the garden for me and gave me cornflower seeds to sow. They always appeared without fail. As well as a front and back garden he also had an allotment so we were never short of veg or fruit. Thinking back now I don't know how he managed it all working full time with only Sunday off and a half day in the week. Many years ago. 

gjautos

Using my dad's earthed up potato plot as a bmx track😬. 

punkdoc

Dead heading my Dad's Pinks, maybe that was why I took so long to get interested.

didyw

Another memory I have is of being on my Dad's allotment with my younger brother. We went on an adventure, walking around the perimeter of the entire plot - which seemed massive to us and Dad so far away, scrambling over brambles and things and a bit anxious that we would never find our way back. 

Fairygirl

punkdoc said:

Dead heading my Dad's Pinks, maybe that was why I took so long to get interested.

  
I spend quite a lot of time doing that. Relentless, but I enjoy it. Must be a masochist.
My Grandpa always grew them, and carnations , so I think that stayed with me. I loved my Grandpa. 

I honestly can't remember what my earliest memory of gardening is. We were never given a patch of garden to potter in. 
I can remember my  mum and her over wintered pelargoniums in the porch though. Didn't really like them then, still don't 

Balgay.Hill

Never had a garden when i was a bairn, so my earliest memory is 'plundering' other gardens for apples, pears and plums. The constant threat of a beating if you got caught added to the excitement! 

punkdoc

Maybe that was the problem, didn't like my Dad much.
I bought P. Lord Bute after you mentioned it some years ago and I love it. Now have a few.

Topbird

The heady smell of stocks on a hot summer's day while eating a scotch egg and tomato picnic. I was probably about 5 at the time.

That and growing carrot tops in a saucer or mustard and cress on a bit of old flannel in infant school.