As part of the Community Plant Library project we have collected personal plant stories from people across Belfast to explore the different ways plants connect with our lives.
Belfast Plant StoriesExploring Belfast’s relationship with plant life and place through the plant stories of the local community. Plants in some shape or form are an important part of life for most people. Forming some of our earliest memories, helping the environment and positively impacting our health and wellbeing. As part of the Community Plant Library project we have collected personal plant stories from people across Belfast to explore the different ways plants connect with our lives. You can read some of these stories below.
Why do you love plants?
“My greatest joy is around plants. When I feel stressed I like to go in the garden and smell some flowers or just look at them. To a point it is one of the first things I like to do when I wake up.”
“My greatest joy is around plants. When I feel stressed I like to go in the garden and smell some flowers or just look at them. To a point it is one of the first things I like to do when I wake up.”
“I have loved plants for as long as I can remember. My mother was a keen gardener when I was growing up in West Africa and whether it was frangipani, bougainvillea or papaya, there was always something to enjoy and learn about. Back here my paternal grandmother was a great gardener with a love of roses and growing her own fruit and veg. She took me to the Botanic Gardens in Dublin and it’s a visit I will always remember because I was so excited about the whole experience. Plants, wildlife and growing things really enrich my life and bring calm even when life is not.”
“I get so much pleasure from gardening, visiting gardens, and talking to other gardeners. I still have a flowering cactus which belonged to my grandmother and which she passed on to me 55years ago.”
What are some of your earliest plant memories?
“Using the long racemes of red flowers from amaranthus as ‘tails’ tucked into our waistbands when playing with my sister”
“Shelling and eating my Dads garden peas. I still feel the comfort of the greenery and see my satisfied self in the shade between the ridges of plants”
“Banyan trees with swinging roots in India.”
“Helping my dad lift potatoes out of the ground”
“Being on my dad’s shoulders in a meadow seeing little springs bubbling and bees buzzing towards the African wild flowers. My day would be made when dad would allow me time to look at them and pick one. Was maybe 3 or 4 then, he knew I wouldn’t eat them.”
“Pulling the heads off daisies as a very young child!”
” The garden of my childhood home.”
“As a child, weeding with my mother.”
“Helping my mother in her vegetable plot.”
“Being fascinated by cacti.”
“My parents had a large garden and my mother, a keen gardener, used to walk around it with me and name all the plants.”
“I grew up in the tea plantation in the lower Himalayas called Assam. Our compound surrounded by different species of plant’s.”
“I remember plants from my grandparents’ house in Koregaon Park which was in the few green areas of a very built up city – Pune – in India. There were plants – well, trees! – that had always been there like banyan and coconut trees and then there were the curated hedges, thick grass and flowers that were tended to carefully. Flowers in the neighbourhood included bougainvillea and hibiscuses.”
“Picking peas with my grandpa in his back garden! I have such fond memories of time spent at his house and this and his homemade bread are really defined memories for me! Eating fuschia plants from my local neigbourhood.”
“My earliest plant memory is a mix between picking blackberries with my mum and granny and (accidentally) growing oak trees in the sandpit at home, I’m not exactly sure which of them is the earliest memory.
Myself and my brother used to collect acorns and conkers to play with when walking home from nursery with our mum – many of which would be forgotten about in the back garden and take root. During those same walks home we would collect blackberries and crab apples to make crumbles and jams from.”
“Tasting the fuchsia flowers from my grandfather’s hedge. Also the tropical smell of the whin bushes at Wellbrook Beetling Mill. Not sure which came first.”
“I think from a very young age in Fermanagh where my granny lived. When there we were always outside and they grew fruit and veg and farmed extensively. We also had lots of houseplants at home.”
” My earliest plant memory is being fascinated by flowers as a child. I loved seeing the different colours and shapes and watching them grow. I also remember helping my parents and grandparents growing plants, vegetables and herbs, and seeing how a little care, patience and sunshine could turn a tiny seed into something beautiful and useful.”
