A Gardener’s Confession by Diana Wood

Many of us have been fortunate to visit Diana's garden at Boxwood Cottage in Westview. In this piece Diana shares how her love of gardening began and what it means to her today.



A Gardener’s Confession
By Diana Wood

There are three types of gardeners as far as  I am concerned, the one who loves flowers therefore grows and tends his or her plot, according to my observation most women belong to this group. The other type who loves to grow vegetables for health and practical reasons, I think most people belong to this group, If a manis interested in gardening he would be in this group. The third type is the one who loves to watch the growth of plants from germination of seeds to harvesting, during the whole growing process he or she get to see the beauty of the plants and consume the fruits of joint effort from mother nature and his or her labour in love.

When I was a child of about  eight or nine years old, our family moved to a newly built home surrounded by farmland, the world around us was green. Taipei, where I lived, was in a subtropical zone where plants grew easily by themselves. If someone threw an unfinished tomato on the roadside, the seeds would germinate and grew, often I saw tomato plants prowling on the ground and tons of red fruits would hang from the vines during the summer.

Once I threw papaya seeds in our yard, within days the seeds germinated, I watched the large leaves expanding as the plant grew taller, in a year there were papayas hanging on top of the tree. All these growing processes fascinated me. One day I got hold of some cayenne pepper seeds from the kitchen and buried them in our front yard, every day I watched for the green head to show up, and there after I watched it grow into a small tree (To a child it was like a tree, when the plant grow about three feet and I was probably four feet tall.) Next the green fruits grew from size of rice to three inches long, the most amazing thing happened was the fruits turned red, it was so beautiful, I looked at it and admired it, It became the first thing I wanted to do as soon as I was up in the morning.
I was so proud when I took the cayenne peppers to my mother and to my neighbors.

My next project was growing something that had nice scent, I was given a plant called “hundred miles fragrance.” It was a evergreen shrub and bore thousands of small white flowers, and it’s scent was so strong that all my neighbors could smell it, It was not very popular with people because not everyone liked the same scent, but I did. I had also grown hibiscus for the pretty flowers and luffa squash for its taste in the soup.

In my whole life, wherever I lived I grew a garden, I find while I am working in the garden my whole being is in tune with nature, my senses are all open to the stimuli of the air, sun and earth. I see, I smell, and I hear all the beauties and magic around me, I am part of the nature, it makes me happy to be one with it.

Diana's garden

Info on  “hundred miles fragrance.”plant  dapne odora, more dapne odora