A Morning with Iris: Passing on the Gardening Bug

Hang on a minute, because if you'd told me five or six years back that my youngest would be up the plot before her own father on a day off school, I'd have laughed you clean out of the shed. This is a girl who, not that many summers ago, would only come up under protest, arms folded, wellies on the wrong feet half the time out of pure principle, moaning about the smell of the manure heap loud enough for old Pat two plots down to hear and chuckle at. And now here she is, first through the gate, camera out, quietly getting on with it before I've even had a proper mouthful of tea.

I wanted to write a bit about that journey this week, because I reckon there's something in it for anyone trying to get a child, grandchild, or young person of any sort hooked on growing their own. It didn't happen because I sat her down and lectured her about the virtues of home-grown veg, and thank goodness for that, because that would have put her off for life. It happened almost by accident, and looking back now, I can see exactly where the turn came.

From Reluctant to First Through the Gate

For years, Iris was the one dragging her heels. Sam took to it naturally, being that bit older and more like me in temperament, but Iris wanted nothing to do with digging or weeding or anything that involved getting her hands properly dirty. She'd sit on the upturned bucket by the shed with a face like a wet Wednesday, kicking at the grass, asking how much longer we'd be.

The turn, as far as I can work it out, came the year she was about twelve, when I gave her a little strip of ground at the end of one of the beds and told her it was hers, entirely hers, to do with as she pleased. No veg, no rules, no "you ought to grow this because it's practical." Just a patch of soil and whatever seeds she fancied out of the catalogue. She went straight for the flowers, cosmos and sweet peas and a packet of zinnias that were far too gaudy for my taste, and within a season that scrappy little strip was the most colourful thing on either allotment. I reckon that's the moment the bug properly bit. Not because I told her gardening was wonderful, but because I got out of the way and let her find it herself.

If you want to understand Iris and gardening, you have to understand that flowers came first, and everything else followed on behind. Where I'm forever fussing over onion rows and Sam's got his eye on the beans, Iris will tell you straight that the sweet peas are the whole point of having an allotment at all. She's grown proper besotted with cut flowers over the last couple of years, cosmos in every shade from white through to a deep, almost chocolatey pink, dahlias she nurses through winter in the greenhouse like they're delicate house pets rather than tubers in a bag of compost, and a patch of marigolds and nasturtiums along the bed edges that, if I'm honest, do more good for the cabbages than they get credit for, keeping the blackfly and whitefly occupied elsewhere.

She's the one who cuts a jam jar's worth for the kitchen windowsill most weeks, and there's nothing quite like coming in from a cold morning on the plot to a splash of orange and pink sat there catching the light on the table. Sara pretends she doesn't notice these things. She absolutely notices, and I've caught her more than once moving the jar six inches to the left so it catches the sun better.

The Girl Behind the Camera

The other thing that's changed everything, and I mean everything, is that phone of hers. Iris takes more photographs up that allotment in a single morning than I've taken in thirty years of gardening, and unlike my efforts, which mostly consist of a blurry thumb and half a courgette, hers are actually worth looking at. She'll lie flat on her front in the mud to get a bee properly mid-landing on a cosmos flower. She'll wait, patient as anything, for a dewdrop to catch the light just right on a runner bean leaf. Half the photographs on this blog over the last year or two, if I'm honest with you, are hers rather than mine, and the blog's all the better for it.

What strikes me most is that the camera hasn't made her precious about the plot, the way you might imagine. It's done the opposite. She notices things now that the rest of us walk straight past, a particular vein pattern on a leaf, a slug trail catching the morning light like something out of an art gallery, the exact moment a runner bean flower opens. She's paying proper attention to the plot in a way that's actually taught me a thing or two about my own vegetables after all these years, which isn't something I ever expected to say about my youngest.

Not Afraid of Graft

Here's the bit that gets me every time, though, and it's the bit I'm proudest of. For all her love of the pretty side of things, the flowers and the photography, Iris does not shirk when it comes to the graft. Not one bit. When Sam and I were fighting that drought-baked bed with the broad fork a couple of weeks back, she was straight in there taking her turn, rocking it gently the way I'd shown her rather than trying to muscle it in like her brother does. When there's a barrow load of well-rotted manure to shift, she's got the sleeves rolled up before I've even asked. Old Pat said to me only last week, leaning on his fence in that way he does, "that lass of yours doesn't half graft for someone who spends half her time taking photographs," and he meant it as the compliment it was.

I think a lot of people assume a young person who's into the pretty side of gardening, the flowers and the photos and the Instagram-worthy shots, must be squeamish about the mucky bits. Iris will happily tell you that's rubbish. She's cleared bramble with the loppers till her arms ached, she's knelt in February mud planting garlic with hands so cold she couldn't feel her fingers, and she's never once, not once, said the job was beneath her. If anything, she seems to understand better than most that you don't get the flowers worth photographing without putting the work in first.

Growing Stronger, Season by Season

And here's a thing I've noticed properly this last year that I don't think I've mentioned on the blog before. Iris is getting stronger, properly stronger, from all this manual work, and it shows. A couple of summers back she could barely manage a half-full watering can up the length of the plot without stopping. Now she'll wheel a barrow of compost that would have had her wobbling not so long ago, dig a hole for a fence post without asking Sam to finish it off for her, and carry sacks of bulbs and seed potatoes in from the car without a second thought. When we were levelling the base for the new shed a fortnight back, she was out there with the spirit level and the tamper right alongside Sara and me, not standing about watching.

There's something rather lovely about watching that happen to your own child, the quiet, unglamorous strength that comes from regular honest work outdoors rather than anything you'd find in a gym. No fuss made about it, no announcement, just a steady season-on-season change that you only really notice if you're paying attention, which I suppose is rather the point of everything else she's teaching me about looking properly at things.

A Bit Like Watching My Dad All Over Again

I've written before about my own dad, and how he's the reason I ended up doing any of this at all, teaching me on his own plot when I was barely old enough to hold a trowel properly. I never expected, all those years later, to feel the same thing happening in reverse, watching my own daughter fall in love with a patch of ground the way I did with his. It's a funny old feeling, standing there with your tea going cold, watching someone half your age discover something you've known for decades, and realising they're teaching you things right back.

My Tip This Week

If you're trying to get a young person hooked on growing, here's the one thing I'd pass on above everything else: give them their own ground, however small, and then leave them to it. Don't hand them a job list. Don't insist it's veg because veg is "useful." Let them grow whatever daft, gaudy, entirely impractical thing catches their eye, because the ownership is what does the work, not the lecture. Iris didn't fall in love with gardening because I told her to. She fell in love with it because one small patch of soil was entirely hers to get right or get wrong.

Because I Can't Resist a Recipe (Or a Loaf)

With the nasturtiums and cherry tomatoes both going great guns on Iris's patch at the minute, here's a simple one she helped put together herself, peppery, fresh, and about as far from a shop-bought salad as you can get.

Iris's Nasturtium and Tomato Salad

• A good big handful of cherry tomatoes, halved
• A handful of nasturtium leaves, torn
• A dozen or so nasturtium flowers, whole
• A small red onion, sliced thin
• A splash of good olive oil
• A splash of vinegar, whatever you've got in
• Salt and pepper to taste

Toss the tomatoes, onion and torn nasturtium leaves together first, dress with the oil and vinegar, season it up, then scatter the whole nasturtium flowers over the top right at the end so they keep their shape. The leaves and flowers have got a proper peppery kick to them, a bit like rocket with attitude, and it's smashing alongside a warm slice of whatever loaf's come out of the oven that day. Saturday, as ever, is bread day in our house, the week's cobs all done in one go while the radio's on, and there's not much that beats this salad with a still-warm heel of that bread and a bit of butter.

So that's been our week so far, one plot getting the last of the drought sun, a girl with a camera making the rest of us look properly at what we grow, and a reminder that the best thing you can do for a young gardener is get out of their way and let them dig their own patch, in every sense.

I'd love to know, was there a particular moment that got you hooked on gardening, or got someone in your family hooked? Or have you tried the "give them their own patch" trick yourself?

Happy growing, everyone. See you on the plot.