I do not like gardening, never have.

The title may seem strange to a gardener, but in my case it is the truth. My problem is that I love the beauty and variety of flowers and for that matter trees. As a youngster my father 'gave' me a climbing rose that grew against the fence at the bottom of the garden under the trees of the woodland which we bordered.
It was 20 years old when it finally got removed. but I was a rebel so I grew cacti building a collection of over 6000 plants in three greenhouses. I was 14, these were destroyed in the winter of 1977 (I think) after we lost all the heating.
Devastated, I walked away from gardening and never picked up a garden spade again until 2000. I have since moved to Norfolk having brought my wife's dream cottage. It needed a complete internal rebuild, and after three years I was able to turn my attention to the garden ... all 70m x 25m of it.
Now to someone who dislikes picking up a spade it was a daunting prospect but I came up with a solution by creating a Mediterranean English garden which allows us to have a small cottage garden, a woodland garden, both for the wife, and a rose garden for me and a joint shrub orchard. The latter two areas are being covered in weed matting and stone. There are currently 42 varieties of rose which are mostly scented and fill the garden with a heady fragrance. More are still being added ad the next stage is to create borders using shallow rooted plants in the stone.
So do I love gardening? NOooo.
Do I love flowers? Oh Yes

 

Welcome to Gardeners Corner @Gordon L
Your garden sounds lovely, it's so nice that you're able to have different garden areas for yourself and your wife. The rewards of all those beautiful flowers definitely make up for the hard work of the actual gardening.

 

Welcome to Gardeners Corner Gordon. For a man who says you don't like gardening it sounds as if you've created something that would be lovely to see. If there's any chance of seeing pictures we would all look forward to that here.

 

Welcome to Gardener's Corner @Gordon L
I am a bit like you, I love flowers but don't know much about the theory of gardening.
I have about 100 cacti, some of which I bought as a teenager in the 60s. I can understand your devastation at loosing your collection because I lost several nice big ones one winter when my heater broke down.

 

Thank you, Pictures I can do through the gallery, worked out how to do that, but not how to post or join a discussion lol.

 

Well, as a kid I always hated gardening. When I lived in several flats I was always happy not to have a garden to tend to. Never understood it until I got my own home with my own garden. Now, and also thanks to the pandemic, I realize the joy from watching something grow and bloom. Sitting outside with a cold drink in my hand and watching all the hard work pay it is a welcome change of scenery after doing a desk job most of the day.

 

Gordon, to upload images to a post there is a button called 'Upload a File' at the bottom, right of the box you post in. That will take you to your personal pics. It will appear in the post as a 'thumbnail' so hit the 'full image' button and it will appear full size in your posting box.

 

This was the garden soon after we moved in. I have started to fell the conifers on the distant left.

 

This was the same area taken last autumn.

 

Wow, it looks like a gardeners dream - or nightmare, depending on the individual viewpoint regarding "how important is a nice lawn?"

But there is lots of room and lots of opportunities to make it beautiful

 

These two are as it is today. The rose garden is on the left at the far end behind the pond and Lady Terrace, The orchard is on the right beyond the woodland garden. Behind the patio raised beds are two cottage gardens. The bit that is dug over will be another patio. The path is being changed to a wider format to allow easier wheelchair access.

 

The lawn is not so important, we are retaining the nearest one which is being planted with snowdrops and also the second one for the time being as it is planted with daffodils.

 

Wow! A lovely transformation Gordon. I also like your patio design.