Gardening: not just for grannies

When I was a much younger version of myself being forced to help out with the garden at my grandma's house, I was pretty sure that the whole gardening thing was sooooo boring and should strictly be left to the old people...fast forward to the present and a day of gardening fills my soul with complete happiness. Being outside in the sunshine, watching things grow, the first signs of Spring popping up all over the place - I love it! Does this make me a total granny? Very possibly, but you know what? I say pah! I say gardening can be cool too. This I know as when Gardener's World returned to the BBC this weekend, it started trending on Twitter. Yep, gardeners, trending. Need I say more? Gardening = hip. 

This year I have a whole heap of plans for the garden. It feels like this will be the year, the second in the house, when we finally put our stamp on the garden. At the moment it very much looks like the garden that belonged to the people who lived here before us, except the lawn is definitely not as lush and green looking and it might have one less fuschia bush/plant thingy as I may have chopped it all back today and sawed off the remaining branches ready to be dug up...

I want to add areas! And gravel, and a patio, and loads of pots with fabulous sunflowers! I want a big trough building where I will grow my own salad veggies and just pop out to the garden for a few lettuce leaves to go with dinner. I want to grow sweetpeas in as many locations as possible because they smell amazing and are the only pastel coloured flowers I will allow. I want to paint the benches a new colour and change the shed door from that awful dark brown to something way more interesting and pleasing to my eyes. I want more solar lights so that the whole garden is covered in coloured twinkly stars when we sit out on a summer evening and enjoy a glass of pink wine or two. I want, I want, I want so much! Watch this space to see if it actually happens...

But until it's time to start all my jobs, I'm delighting in watching the Spring bulbs burst to life - the clumps of tiny yellow daffodils, the chunky tulips that will make me smile every single day, the big hyacinths that we've never grown before so let's hope they work out okay, and the fragile crocuses with their hidden yellows. I love it all. Gardening is good for the soul, well, this soul anyway.