Ask any gardener and I'm sure they can vouch that their initial interest in gardening began in their childhood. From planting radishes with Mum to seed experiments in school we became fascinated with the plant kingdom and wanted to satisfy this new found curiosity. Yet over the years,our interest level has ebbed and flowed like the tides across a sandy beach.

Why doesn't our level of excitement and involvement just continue to grow? My hunch is that life has a way of keeping us balanced and gardening, like any activity in life, cannot be exponential all the time. Check out his timeline to see what I mean.

DISCLAIMER: Now as this is just a hunch, and definitely not a proven theory, I'm open to discussion as to whether these events actually have any effect at all on our gardening activity. If not, then you can just humour me by reading my observations and then shooting me down in flames in the comment section.

The 6 Stages of Gardening Activity

CHILDHOOD - obviously the first stage occurs in your childhood. Whether it be your mum, dad or grandpa, someone introduces you to this new world - the Plant Kingdom. This is an extraordinary passage of time when you begin to discover seeds become vegetables, or flowers, and butterflies, bees and messy worms all play a part in the cycle of life.

As you grow, your interest level increases until you hit the dreaded 'teen years'. Unfortunately gardening takes second place to boys/girls, music and parties. Gardening is then relegated to the "squids" who don't have a life and spend their weekends teasing apart a bunch of seeds as though they were trying to split the atom. It becomes very 'uncool' to stay home and garden.

NEW HOME - but, even teenagers grow up at some stage and somewhere between 18-25 you find you're moving into your own place - a rental, a dormitory, or if you're one of the lucky ones - your own house. Suddenly gardening hits the agenda again because this new place needs some 'life' in it.

You start dabbling in container plants, transplants, buying plants and any plant you can get your hands on. Some work - some fail. But you're enjoying yourself again and your gardening interest increases.

FAMILY - and the life cycle repeats itself but this time you're the one popping out children and then exposing them to this adventurous hobby. That is until they start growing up and then you're running them to soccer, or ballet, or sleepovers and that time you enjoyed previously gets eaten up by the ankle-biters.

Gardening is still a desire but you just feel too tired to get out there and dig over a new garden bed like you did before you got married. Just when you thought you could spare an hour to repot some orchids your 5 year old son has an altercation with the floor - little boys should never try and fly!

PRODUCE - then those little boys turn into voracious eating-machines that can mow the insides of a fridge within seconds. The answer: we need to grow our own veggies! So, rather than just being a fun hobby, gardening now takes on a purpose. Instead of reading through bulb catalogues you're now flicking the pages of seed magazines eagerly searching for the spuds with the highest yield per hectare.

All that activity lasts for a period until you realise that the neighbourhood insects enjoy your veggies more than your teenage children - didn't see that one coming! Then it's off to the local nursery for some insecticides, pesticides, herbicides and any other chemical that can deal with the grubby little grubs.

Then you stop and wonder why you're bothering to grow all these veggies when the only ones who eat them are the pests and they're now more covered in chemicals than shop bought produce.

EMPTY NEST - finally the last of the children have left home and it's time to revisit those free teenage years again. You start wining and dining, travel becomes an option and sleep-ins on Saturday mornings stretch out past lunch - (I'm not there yet, so this is just my little fantasy!).

While you certainly have more time on your hands, gardening probably hasn't taken the spotlight like it did when you first moved. It still happens but less intensely.

RETIRE - but after a while, even ME-time can get a little boring. You're now ready to leave your career and start pottering around that garden again. You may even be young and fit enough to take on a new project like buy some acreage and start afresh.

Or maybe you now have time to join that gardening group you dreamt about just before you had a family. Or, you could start to enter those orchids in gardening competitions. The world is your oyster and you have every freedom to now enjoy your hobby as you always hoped you could. Until your hip displaces and your health wanes, that is...

I often find myself dreaming of the future and how my garden could be when such and such is just right. I have to remind myself that there is no time like the present to enjoy the season I'm in.