It’s a sign of a real gardener, isn’t it? That shed crammed to the rafters with black plastic pots and never-opened seed catalogues is surely a requirement to be taken seriously as a gardener.

Hoarding, after all, is the Australian way, isn’t it? At least it seems that way.

Television programs from as far away as America and the UK take us into the homes of people whose hoarding addictions seriously impact their lives, but here in Australia, we pack everything away in our garden sheds along with the onions we forgot to bring in the house to eat.

A writer for the Timaru Herald over in New Zealand wrote <a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/timaru-herald/opinion/the-burrows-report/4604415/Shed-would-make-any-hoarder-proud">a piece in January </a>about a shed that would make any hoarder proud. Like most garden sheds, it contained a nearly endless supply of plastic seedling containers as well as pieces of outdoor games that are too badly damaged to use again.

The writer suggested, however, that if the United States ever plans to use Agent Orange again to strip the leaves from an entire country, this shed had the hardware necessary to do the job. That’s a well-stocked shed.

May Dreams Gardens blogger, Carol recently wrote <a href="https://www.maydreamsgardens.com/2011/09/bulb-hoarding.html">about an article</a> she read in a newspaper concerning bulb hoarding. As it turns out, the article was about people collecting old-fashioned light bulbs before they stop making them, but it set her mind racing. It seems she planned to start hoarding flower bulbs if everyone else was doing it.

Even for the tidiest among us, is there such a thing as an uncluttered garden shed? It takes a lot of equipment to garden properly and to live grandly, and there are always going to be things left over. They have to go somewhere, don’t they? Throwing things away just seems wrong.