What Type of Gardener are You?
Don’t panic, there is no right or wrong answer. The beauty of gardening is that there is a place for everyone from the perfectionist to the newly initiated to the downright lazy. Your gardening personality is most likely an extension of your character traits, both good and bad, and shouldn’t be the same as the gardener next door. How boring life would be if we all gardened the same!
Basic Gardening Types
There are as many types of gardeners as there are types of people, although for fun, your gardening personality can be loosely categorized into any of the following:
Newbie – The first gardening type has been everyone at some point. We’ll call this personality ‘The Newbie.’ This is the first-time gardener and the results of their first gardening experiences will form their future relationship with gardening for all eternity.
Unenthusiastic – The next gardening style is known as ‘The Unenthusiastic.’ Their indifference probably stems from early failures or they just may be naturally uninterested to the state of the garden. These folks pray for rain, or not. There is no way, no how they are going to set the sprinklers let alone hand water anything.
Landscaper – Next up is the ‘Landscaper’ who considers the whole gardening thing as a necessary home maintenance. This type of gardener has a perfectly edged and mowed lawn. Theirs is meant to inspire envy surrounded by flawlessly manicured and trimmed hedges and trees.
Additional Types of Gardeners
Other gardening styles stem from the above three in some manner and include:
Mother Earth gardener – This gardener grows everything organically, maintains the compost pile, and propagates plants from seeds they’ve collected. They most likely keep chickens or backyard bees, and the garden is focused on food rather than ornamentation.
Specimen gardener – Specimen gardeners are those who like collecting the most unique varieties of plants. They want the garden to be a show place. These folks typically won’t include native plants in their landscape. Instead, they order anything that strikes their fancy and grows anywhere but their USDA zone. This gardener may be doomed to experience one failure after another.
Seasonal gardener – Seasonal gardeners really get into gardening when temperatures warm in the spring. They are passionate, for a while anyway. The novelty of gardening rapidly wears off as temperatures warm and the plants demand constant upkeep.
Passionate gardener – This type eats, sleeps, and breathes gardening. When the weather is bad, they are busy preparing for the upcoming garden season. During snowstorms, they dream of what type of tomato to plant and where to put the witch hazel they’re going to order. They can talk someone’s ear off with their plans, successes, failures, and dreams for the garden.
This is just a brief outline for kinds of gardeners that exist. There are certainly many more types out there, each with their own unique gardening temperament. How about the gardeners who like garden trinkets more than actual plants or those who like a seasonal theme and only use annuals to decorate their landscape? With so many different types of gardening styles and interests, the possible types of gardener are numerous. So, which type of gardener are you?
