Deborah Kellaway - The Making of Town Gardens

I have just finished reading a book by Deborah Kellaway - The Making of Town Gardens which was sent to me by the Garden Poet. Like many garden books it is for long periods lists and descriptions of plants - the triangular leaves and white flowered Viva Bundy X Pundiflorum (I made that one up) grew by the fence, and so on. But there are some part of it that I really enjoyed. There is a section about her learning about gardening which many novices can relate to, when you are just having a go and picking what you like and planting it. I also like the section when she is helping her daughter plant up a new garden and there are the odd moments of fractious words exchanged.

Where I think she hits the nail on the head is with the experimentation phase followed by the knowledge (Well that died last year, I'll either try it somewhere else or try a different plant). But where I think she loses it is with the enigmatic statements later in the book where she clearly feels she has moved to the next gardening stage (Judgement with a bit more knowledge). Deborah even identifies that herself in one section but continues to make the statements: "I thought then that painting it white was a great idea" (paraphrase by the way). Well why wasn't it?

Gardeners do go through phases of knowledge and ability and your tastes change in this area as much as other areas of your life. I remember a blue fur jacket I had as a student which I though was the most amazing and cool garment ever. Suffice to say it was not and I looked like a special variety of loon when wearing it. But I look back on that with amusement and understand that I may feel like that about my current wardrobe in the future, notwithstanding the lesser experimentation levels that come with advancing age. We need to be like that about gardens. Let us not decry our earlier tastes and ideas as somehow wrong now we have achieved a greater level of knowledge, instead let us see it as a natural progression.

Like many things, gardening has an inbuilt snobbery in that many of us want to climb up the ladder of knowledge and ability. Some people have natural talent and luck with it, however for others it is the love and experience that help them be better gardeners. Sneering at your earlier choices indicates that you have moved on from them and therefore have progressed up the gardening pole and are therefore higher than others. 

The British are a nation of gardeners but we are also a nation that likes to benchmark and grade ourselves. I suppose it's only natural that this should apply to gardening too.