The Joy of Gardening

I am a relatively newcomer to gardening. Though I grew up in the countryside (Avoca, Co. Wicklow) where we had a lovely big garden with a fruit and vegetable patch with strawberries, gooseberries, carrots and lettuce and the like, when we moved to Dublin I kind of lost touch with all that.

Recently though I have had real yearning for the country life again. I keep having fantasies about moving to the countryside, where I can see fields, mountains, forests. I don't know if it's because I'm getting older but my inner country girl is finding her way out again. And its not just the landscape I yearn for, but it's also the smell of soil, and the worms, and just growing things. Hence, the gardening.



Above is a picture of our lovely balcony garden. We live on the top floor of a block of apartments in Monkstown, so we get sunlight nearly all day. Our balcony is not big, just 12ft by 4ft, but it is enough to have a bit of a garden.

At the moment it has a mix of flowers, herbs and vegetables. I have jasmine and pansies, and a lovely fuschia plant. Below are my lettuce plants (a mix of lollo rosso, butter lettuce and kos), which I am proud to say I grew from seed (watching something grow from seed is amazing!). There are radishes and spring onions also sown in there. Underneath them is thyme, parsley and lavender.


Indoors on the window ledge are our herbs - basil, coriander (which is getting very big) and mint. I am growing some cuttings from the mint as I would like to make some real mint tea. I have had it before and it knocks the socks of the packaged stuff. I have harvested the parsley and thymea few times already, and ovendried them, which was surprisingly easy.


There's also spider plants, a fern, a peace lily, and a bonsai tree. It sounds alot, and it probably is for the small apartment that we have, but I really feel like there's no such thing as too many plants.

Mental health studies have shown that watching things grow is really beneficial to one's state of mind and general happiness. Apparently they have done tests and the brain waves, when a person is gardening, do a wonderful calm dance. I don't know about the science of it but all I can say is that is has really brightened up my "summer".