I have written a lot about this, in Animal Wild and elsewhere in this blog. I think it is hugely important, more so now than ever before, and it really isn’t difficult. I am astounded that it can still be such an uphill struggle.
I look after two gardens, our own and the adjacent plot which is part of one our airbnbs. It’s on the narrow side but a good length, there’s a decent sized shed with a tumble dryer and at the bottom end there’s an extremely well-appointed and furnished garden office which came with the house (electricity, light, internet) which is extremely comfortable to work and even spend the night in. On top of that there’s a decking area with table and chairs and a barbecue is provided. I think it’s a pretty sweet deal for our guests. But not good enough for our recent Dutch visitors.
With our garden I can of course do pretty much what I want which is mostly very little. This year I have only pulled up brambles and only just recently mown a small area for the first time this year. The other garden has been reluctantly mown and strimmed to some extent. I last did this a couple of weeks ago, carefully mowing around the stunning oxeye daisies and buttercups. It has rained heavily and more or less constantly since them which has promoted quick growth and made mowing impossible until yesterday. I think it looks lovely but our Dutch reviewer did not. He liked the cottage but the garden, in spite of all my hard work, was, he said, “not maintained at all.” Presumably he would like to have seen a perfectly manicured lawn and the heavy use of poisonous herbicides. I was, of course, livid. I am not sure how he thought the plants and flowers in the pots, hanging baskets and troughs on the decking had survived had I not religiously watered them on days when it hasn’t rained since the spring. My mother was much the same. Her middle-class and generational notion of what a garden should look like used to drive me crazy. I have worked hard over the years on the gardens in this house and the much smaller one in Cookham where we lived before. They looked “ghastly” she would say, in a shocked tone. Then she would offer to pay for a gardener. “But I’m the gardener!” I would say, exasperatedly, over and over again. To our guests I would say they need to get with the Zeitgeist – this is 2024, there’s a climate crisis and wildlife, especially in the UK, is in freefall. If my gardening choices are not to your taste, that’s fine, just don’t come back. And don’t be so effing rude.
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