Garden centres are facing an existential threat as the nation turns from green to grey. A new poll suggests more than one in five households plan to pave or deck over their patch in the next five years. It seems for many, the privilege of a garden no longer comes with the willingness to maintain it. They don’t want a garden at all but an “outdoor living space”. Artificial grass, festoon lighting, a patio heater, and the odd evergreen shrub. Somewhere along the line, the quaint English country garden has been traded for the smoking area at a Wetherspoon’s.
Not me though. Never knowingly ‘on trend’, my garden is not for entertaining, it’s for gardening. No summer barbecues, no Aperol Spritz with pals on a chic rattan sofa. No lawn for sunbathing either – that was the first thing to go. It is high-maintence, back-breaking and labour-intensive. Less a garden and more a gulag.
Big borders that need constant weeding, and refilling. A veg patch that demands watering, harvesting, and bagfuls of manure. Garden centres need not fear extinction while I still have air in my lungs and muck under my nails.
It’s very rare that a week will go by without me popping in to have a gander over the dead and dying section. This weekend I went twice. (No, I don’t care what you think. And no, I don’t have anything better to do.)
The idea that you can have a low maintenance garden is a fantasy. How low, exactly? Even a 4ft by 4ft concrete yard needs sweeping. There’s no weed barrier that truly keeps out weeds, and no easy planting scheme that doesn’t still need pruning and tidying.
I’m no rewilding evangelist, but I do want to spread the concept of re-gardening – taking back neglected space and tending it. This year I tackled the scrappy front garden.
When a storm finally flattened the ugly old fence, my upstairs neighbours and I agreed not to replace it. So I set about transforming the drab square of gravel and weeds into a Mediterranean-style gravel garden.
What was once grey and unloved is now buzzing with colour and life and beauty, if I do say so myself. And, reader, I won’t pretend that I don’t flush with pride when passer-bys stop to admire it.
In the immortal words of the high priestess Joni Mitchell, let’s not pave paradise and put up a parking lot. Besides, a few hardy geraniums, some euphorbia and a couple of salvias is far cheaper and lovelier than an slab of tarmac.