Real Gardens

Fashions in gardening come and go. Another Chelsea Flower Show has now come and gone and more television programmes than ever are now devoted to gardening. Gardening is certainly hitting the headlines these days.

What has struck me very forcibly about the current trends in gardening is how the plants seem to have been pushed to one side. We now have easy maintenance gardens, gardens with decking, garden lighting aimed from all directions, stone gardens, gardens full of figures, gardens with Arabian domes, twee water features, even metal and glass gardens. Most of these gardens are of course very cleverly constructed and many must have cost a small fortune.

I can't count the number of times I have watched a gardening programme presented by some up and coming designer whose affinity with gardening plants is almost non-existent. Too often, these presentations have more to do with interior design than gardening. Even Chelsea has become a byword for chic gardening and most of the show gardens are elaborate stage sets where the plants are no more than bit actors planted to flesh out the designers own particular flair for staging bits of metal, plastic tubing or glass and stone.

Call me old fashioned, but I thought gardening was about plants and how we grow them to best advantage!

This contemporary fetish with all things artificial has now become an epidemic of plague proportions. It is not confined to gardening shows or television either. Many gardening magazines and books now devote their time to outdoor décor rather than plants and how to grow them.

How refreshing therefore, to tend a real garden with plants. Therein of course is the problem. Plant culture requires different skills and constant attention to detail. In other words an all together different mindset. Nurturing a garden over many years is a joy; a pastime full of problems yes, but one many of us have chosen to be far more satisfying than instant gardens full of assorted junk.

In growing plants we learn a lot about ourselves as much as the plants we try to grow. The pitfalls are many. It is a constant learning process, keeping us in touch with the seasons and nature itself. Many of the best gardeners are self-taught. Trying to grow plants well is character building. No one season is the same and not all our efforts succeed, but boy do we enjoy it. Gardening with plants is a great leveller too, requiring neither a large bank balance nor a vast estate. I don't know about you, but I would rather spend half and hour planting a clematis properly than agonising over the angle of some garden mirror.

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