I'm 37, I started a garden so I could have a larger variety of foods (we are more adventurous eaters than our neighbors), I wanted to know where it came from, I wanted to save money (yeah, right), and I wanted to be able to preserve food. It's also very fun and I think vegetable plants are beautiful.

I have worked/gone to school in large urban areas but did not have dirt there. I have had gardens in small urban areas and currently live in town in a small city.

I was brought up gardening.

My favorite part of gardening is the day I can put out all of my seedlings (grown by me) - everything is tidy, orderly, there are no weeds, and there is plenty of promise. I also enjoy the last day of the garden, turning my back on the spent plants, carrying the last basket into the house, and being able to see what I've put up for the winter.

:)

39, female, from a gardening family, always grown a few vegetables, but find myself with time on my hands, a large garden and missing the variety of veg, I was spoilt with in the UK, also the shocking price of this compared to the part of the UK I am from, I could buy 4 cabbage or 4 cauliflower for the approx cost, of $1.50 most of the growing season which is way longer than my part of the US, and Brussel sprouts a whole stalk for 75c, a small punnet here of about 12 costs $3.99! also like alot of people I miss some of the stuff from home like runner beans and purple sprouting broccoli, so instead of moaning! which I suppose I just have! I am growing it. also its a fun thing for all my family to do together.
I live in I suppose a suburban area, but to me it feels rural, I lived in the rural SE UK in villages, but my neighbours where way closer to each other than here.

I was 26 when I started gardening, I'm now 29 years old and I garden for pure satisfaction. I originally started planting my own tomato plants because the produce at the local super market was horrible. Now I find that I do it mainly for stress relief, so I guess I'd call it a hobby. I live in a small suburban neighborhood, in a small town in central Oklahoma. My back yard is my garden. Although I come from a long line of farmers, I don't really know all that much about gardening but I enjoy learning as I go.

My most satisfying moment comes from sharing my veggies with family and friends. I usually grow more than I can eat, and after supplying everyone I know with fresh grown vegetables I donate to the local food bank charity. That is very satisfying.

Female in my mid-40's here. I've gardened since I was a child -- helping my father.

I do it because life without food growing just isn't right. Every spring I simply have to go out and play in the dirt.

My natural habitat is the semi-rural area on the outskirts of small towns, but the current house is actually in town -- which makes fertilizing a problem since a decent consideration for my neighbors makes bringing in a few loads of manure to be placed 50 feet from one neighbor's patio and 100 feet from another neighbor's pool impossible.

I'm 22 and I live in a small town I started my garden so we can have fresh salsa and veggies. This year is my first attempt at gardening, I hope I can pull it off.

31 yr old female. I started gardening with herbs years ago, to have fresh ones for cooking. When I married and moved into a house, here in a small town, my husband and I put out our fav veggies, tomato and cukes. I'm situated in an odd area, urban to my left, and to my right over the woods is nothing but farmland. But my yard is small and urban, in an older part of town. I recently expanded my gardening of herbs and veggies, because we want accesible organic produce. I also grow medicinal herbs, and flowers, and have planted some shrubs also. Want access to these plants, and make my environment more pleasing. It's a hobby, and a passion!

Female, mid-40's. My grandparents had a huge garden, my mom gardened, so I grew up with wonderful food. We also raised beef and chickens. Very rural.
As a young adult, I got completely away from gardening.
Ten years ago I moved to the country again to 12 acres. First thing I did was plant a garden! I had 5 old tires and I planted veggies in them! Deer ate them.
Gradually, I've improved and added. I now have a 40' x 50' area fenced from deer with 13 raised beds of varying sizes and materials. There's 2 of us, down from 6 when all the kids were at home! LOL
I love to can, dry, freeze my produce and I buy locally those I don't grow.
My garden is therapy! Not sure it's any cheaper, but it works for me!

Deanna

Male, late 50's. First gardened as a child, helping my grandparents (who lived with us in their retirement) maintain a large veg garden and fruit trees. My grandparents were from Italy and growing food was second nature to them.

Once out of the house I rented through my 20's, so gardening opportunities were sporadic and my efforts not terribly serious. As things became more stable in my 30's and I had my own places I gradually become very serious about it.

I bought my current home in 2004, five acres in a rural setting in western Illinois. A main criterion in selecting this place was its potential to grow food. My main veg garden here is inside a 110 x 60 foot compound, enclosed by two garden buildings and deer-proof fence. Garden is almost all raised bed and all organic. Outside the compound is an orchard with a variety of fruit and nut trees, and stands of various bramble fruits around the property. Morels grow in the orchard.

The main reason I'm into gardening, is culinary - I love to cook and I love to dine, and gardening ensures a supply of the highest quality veggies and fruit, including veggies or varieties of veggies difficult or impossible to get otherwise.

But I greatly enjoy many other aspects of gardening - healthy eating, exercise, economic benefits, the satisfaction of sharing knowledge and produce, certainty about what's in your food, etc. I also really enjoy the creative opportunities to "Macgyver" - to solve problems with found or discarded materials - that often come up in gardening (as do many other folks on the Frugal Gardening forum on this site).

And perhaps the most valuable thing it has come to give me is the hardest to articulate.....let's call it the experience of being plugged back into the natural world, the cycle of the seasons, the weather, the life of plants and animals....once upon a time I felt like an observer of this world, like somebody watching a movie. But now I find myself IN the movie. Or should I say back in the movie? And it is very good to be back.

62 year old female, started gardening when I was 5. Since I was closer to the ground my daddy taught me to weed and to do that, I had to know the difference between a vegetable and a weed!
I garden because I love it--love to plant, love to weed, love to eat the results. My favorite thing about gardening is sharing the vegetables, especially if I can introduce someone to a vegetable they haven't enjoyed before.
We live on a small farm in Central Texas, with two vegetable gardens, two herb gardens, two bee hives (beginning to sound like Noah, aren't we?) and a small flock of chickens. We also have several flower beds and I'm contemplating starting a dedicated garlic bed. Wait until my husband hears about that!
Come visit us at our website, www.rgf-tx.com where the Red Gate at the farm is always open to visitors. We aren't selling anything, and if you want to get our monthly newsletter with recipes, gardening tips, and the latest news on the birds (hens) and bees, we will keep your e-mail address private.

35, husband and father of two young boys on a city lot in a small town in the midwest.

I started gardening for three reasons. 1) My Dad had an awesome garden and moved out of his house when we moved into ours. Many of his best perennials were "saved" from his garden to start our garden. 2) My wife and I like fresh food, and keeping heirloom varieties in use. 3) My job requires that I recognize native plants when they are very young. The best way to do it was to plant them in my garden and weed around them all season.

I have been growing veggies and herbs for about 10 years, and native wildflowers for 5 years. Now branching out into native shrubs and fruit trees.

My favorite things are seeing wildlife respond to native plants and to eat my heirloom veggies with fresh herbs.