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I grew up in Helsinki, Finland. My gardening activities started at age 6, when I sprouted a bunch of orange seeds from those notoriously seed-filled 1960s oranges and ended up with a dozen of little orange trees in my parent's living room. To my great dismay, my mother considered my orange trees perfect housewarming gifts, and soon I only had one orange tree left. Next, I was introduced to outdoor gardening when helping my father plant and harvest potatoes at our summerhouse a half an hour outside of Helsinki.

When little old ladies asked me at age 6 what I would become when I grew up, I confidently responded “A Master Gardener”. This dream was finally realized at age 33, after straying for a quarter century in the world of book knowledge and science.

Upon moving to Seattle in 1985, I discovered a whole new world of gardening. Gone were the restrictions and challenges of gardening in Finland's semi-arctic climate. For the next 14 years I enjoyed planting and harvesting “exotics” such as figs, grapes, peaches, and even kiwis.

As Master Gardener Advisor at Seattle's P-patch Community Gardens I was privileged to discuss gardening methods with hundreds of gardeners, which opened my mind to a wide variety of gardening techniques and tricks. Especially enjoyable were the work parties involving planting of street trees, hauling mulch, and general upkeep of the city's gardening ventures.

In the midst of this, people would occasionally ask me when I was going to move back to Finland, to which I confidently replied “Never!”

So, in early spring of 1999 I found myself, together with my daughter Linnea, then age 10, standing on an abandoned, overgrown, snow-covered farm field in my native Finland, all enthusiastic about establishing the model garden of my dreams. This project was to be done within the time span of a ten episode weekly gardening show, which aired on Finnish public television (YLE).

Strangely enough, we are still in Finland, living in our new house, completed in 2004, on a hill overlooking our 1.2 hectare property: The original garden from 1999, a small arboretum featuring over 100 trees from all over the northern hemisphere, and two greenhouses where we grow hundreds of annuals for early summer sale, as well as vegetables 8 months of the year. We also have a small guesthouse for ecologically minded visitors from all over the world.