Welcome to Here's the Dill!

My name is Jayme and I recently discovered my passion for gardening, or rather, in plants and their interactions within the world.

I studied biology with a specialization in marine and aquatic biology thinking I wanted to research coral reef ecosystems—thank you Blue Planet and Discovery Channel. But it wasn’t until I started moving further away from home that I realized what my true interests were: digging in the garden.

On this journey I hope to go from a knowledgeable gardener to full out nerdy expert and share my geeky gardening tendencies with others who have the same passion. This is a space to gain a deeper understanding of the natural processes occurring in your garden. I’ll also explore agricultural and environmental topics surrounding plants in order to understand world wide conversations over climate change and what we as individuals can do to help.

Without further ado, Welcome to Here’s the Dill!

It started around the age of 9, watching my dad turn an overgrown 1.5 acre (0.6 hectare) plot of land into lawn and a series of garden beds. He worked hard digging out forgotten stumps located within a thorny, thistly, poison-ivy-stricken meadow and I got to help. Saturday and Sunday mornings were spent watching gardening programs with my parents on HGTV; you know when the Home and GARDENING Network used to air gardening shows. (Can you tell I was a nerdy kid?) Anyhow, one rainy spring morning, I asked him if I could have a garden bed, and thinking he wouldn’t take me seriously, I went upstairs to play. But within a few minutes he went out into the drizzling rain and dug a small egg shaped bed around a tiny flowering crabapple tree and a patch of peonies. Over the years the bed expanded as I stole one of my mom’s neighboring garden beds and unbeknownst to me, so did my passion for being in the garden.

I didn’t realize that every time I visited home from college or from my first job further away I was always drawn back to my garden. During college I even planted spring bulbs in front of the house my roommates and I occupied. It wasn’t until I moved from Ohio to southern Germany that I realized how much I craved being in one. My lifeline was cut; I could no longer visit my parents on a whim and work in the garden. I didn’t realize how much I relied on gardening to reduce stress and no matter how much you prepare, moving halfway across the world is a fairly stressful event.

I’ve been living in Germany for over 2 years and have since created a balcony garden and starting working in an allotment garden thanks to a kind member of the community. On Here’s the Dill I hope to share my successes and failures of organic gardening along with any interesting topics about agriculture or ecological interactions occurring within a garden. Together we’ll become better gardeners and more conscious citizens of the world!

• Filed to:
• Thoughts