Ever since I was a little girl I have always loved greenhouses. Growing up in a suburb west of Stockholm I was lucky to have access to many of them because the area was full of greenhouses and greenhouse nurseries. Some had theirs out of their small villa garden, and some had rows and rows of long greenhouses made of glass. I loved to walk through them, feeling the humidity, smelling the moist soil, and touching the seedlings, tender and green, soon filling the greenhouses with geraniums, roses or chrysanthemums. It was like a vibrant secret garden that I stepped into. For a long time I thought, “this is where I will work, make my future.”

When I went to Säbyholm Horticulture School at the age of 16, the one of a kind school led me further into the growing of plants in greenhouses, learning the technology and care that was all a part of this profession. At a mandatory internship, I chose to be placed in one of the nursery companies close to my home, thinking this would be a great path going forward. Today I still remember the rows of budding chrysanthemums. There were thousands of them. “Today Tina, your job will be to pinch the mums so that they will grow wider and bigger.” So I started at one end of the greenhouse and went down the aisle of low wooden benches.

That week in the greenhouse with the thousands of chrysanthemums taught me one thing… This was NOT what I wanted to do in my future! And to this day, I do not really like chrysanthemums!

In the late 1990s my husband agreed to adding a small greenhouse to our backyard. In late February I can step inside, breathe in that scent of moist soil again while sowing the spring’s first seeds in small pots, write the names of flowers on those wooden markers, and fill up my water buckets from the hose. This is where I let my two children grow up, in the greenhouse and in the vegetable garden outside. This gave them a chance to get dirty and wet and to learn how to grow plants from seeds. Is there a better way to grow up?