Gardening An Inspiration For Young Writers.

To be a great writer or playwright takes a creative and inventive imagination developed from a young age. Gardening or time spent in a garden often helps develop this imagination, gardens and gardening allow an unstructured mind of a young person to explore and create through play without the normal boundaries of other areas such as school where teachers create rules and boundaries simply to stay in control and to keep play safe. If you consider for a moment some of the most loved books you will see how they could link to a writers childhood experiences in a garden at play such as winnie the poo and pooh stick, The loin, the witch and the wardrobe and Alice in wonderland, all have a strong reference to gardens and gardening.

For a young child a garden offers endless possibilities to explore and expand a growing imagination through play, such as building dams, playing pooh sticks and creating mini kingdoms with the family pets such as the pet rabbit. Very few writers are born with a gift for writing its often more about ability shaped by experience, especially the experience of youth.

From the GardenAdvice teams point of view most of us started young in the family garden growing our imagination and just never stopped we just keep imaging and design gardens for our clients for 6 to 90 years old. Some people are good with figures and concepts but if you are as creative as a writer or designer then a garden is a great place to allow your imagination to run wild and grow.

I often wonder is Julia Donalsdon spent a lot of time in the garden as a young child to develop her imagination. In a recent interview Julia Donalsdon she recommends to a group of aspiring young writers to read Watership Down which I often think is based on the writers Richard Adams childhood experiences in a garden combined with later experiences in life. You can watch the interview with Julia Donalsdon on the Scottish Friendly web site.