An Englishman's garden
The English have a particular relationship with their garden that perhaps nobody else in the world shares apart from the Arabs. In a desert climate, greenery and water are signs of luxury. Sharing your garden is, in an inhospitable climate, a sign of hospitality. How wonderful to spend the day underneath a tree, shaded from the sun, listening to water flow while pondering if one was sitting on vast reserves of oil.
So too, for the Englishman, the garden is intrinsic to his ideas about hospitality, and water is at the centre of all he does. This is not a trait shared by the Scots, who mainly cultivate heathers of different colours and creatures that can graze heather which can then be deep fried. Nor the Welsh, who due to their climate are expert at growing two types of flora: those that look good when shaped by a prevailing wind and so are better at growing horizontally rather than vertically, and mould.
In the late nineties and early part of this century, a conspiracy between the BBC and those that owned 90% of the world’s supply of decking introduced the garden makeover programme and with it the idea that your garden could be just like another room in your house. For the English, a race particularly fond of getting as far away from members of their immediate family as possible, this seemed like a great idea, even if it essentially meant decking a two foot square at the top of the garden and retiring up there with a chair and some beer.
It was odd that this love of gardening ever needed reintroducing. The English have always loved to tame nature, especially if they show off by ripping up the landscape and then replanting it to look ‘natural’. Or just show off, with naughty topiary, or knot gardens (presumably beloved of Elizabethan sailors). In terms of hospitality and gardens, nobody does it better than the English, by adopting the practice of digging a bloody huge trench in your garden and filling it with water. It is an accepted convention that an Englishman’s home is his castle, and if that means a moat to deter double glazing salesmen and boiling oil for carollers, then what could be more English?
While the majority of houses are today tragically un-moated, it’s also true that the majority of houses with gardens are inhabited by those whose attitude towards hospitality is ‘come safely to my place of rest and eat a burger that will, in four hours, make you just shit your kidneys’. The barbeque, very much an outdoor event, allows the Englishman to combine beer and naked flame, two things for which he has both a fascination for, and no control over. Cowslip, new mown grass, petrichor – these are all the smells of an English summer but are any of them as representative as the smell of lighter fluid and charcoal as the inpatient chef commences combustion on another marinated masterpiece?
While fire may be the measure of the hospitality of the English host, water is at the centre of the world of any English gardener. The interesting thing about a water butt is that it is absolutely no bloody use at all when it is full, because filling it requires the heavens to open. And after a few days of dry weather, it’s empty, unless one is the sort of gardener who is able to make Sophie’s choice about which of your thirsty plants are going to get a drink today.
The reason that the English react so badly to hosepipe bans is not because they like to wash their cars themselves. In this age of metered water it is now actually cheaper to go to a municipal car park where half of the bloody spaces have been taken over by some blokes with a shitload of fairy liquid and a jet wash and have them do it for you, but rather because they genuinely cannot fathom why, when rain seems to fall, for free, out of the sky every single fucking day, water companies can’t hold on to some. Have these incompetent arseholes tried putting out some buckets? No? Why not?
So too, for the Englishman, the garden is intrinsic to his ideas about hospitality, and water is at the centre of all he does. This is not a trait shared by the Scots, who mainly cultivate heathers of different colours and creatures that can graze heather which can then be deep fried. Nor the Welsh, who due to their climate are expert at growing two types of flora: those that look good when shaped by a prevailing wind and so are better at growing horizontally rather than vertically, and mould.
In the late nineties and early part of this century, a conspiracy between the BBC and those that owned 90% of the world’s supply of decking introduced the garden makeover programme and with it the idea that your garden could be just like another room in your house. For the English, a race particularly fond of getting as far away from members of their immediate family as possible, this seemed like a great idea, even if it essentially meant decking a two foot square at the top of the garden and retiring up there with a chair and some beer.
It was odd that this love of gardening ever needed reintroducing. The English have always loved to tame nature, especially if they show off by ripping up the landscape and then replanting it to look ‘natural’. Or just show off, with naughty topiary, or knot gardens (presumably beloved of Elizabethan sailors). In terms of hospitality and gardens, nobody does it better than the English, by adopting the practice of digging a bloody huge trench in your garden and filling it with water. It is an accepted convention that an Englishman’s home is his castle, and if that means a moat to deter double glazing salesmen and boiling oil for carollers, then what could be more English?
While the majority of houses are today tragically un-moated, it’s also true that the majority of houses with gardens are inhabited by those whose attitude towards hospitality is ‘come safely to my place of rest and eat a burger that will, in four hours, make you just shit your kidneys’. The barbeque, very much an outdoor event, allows the Englishman to combine beer and naked flame, two things for which he has both a fascination for, and no control over. Cowslip, new mown grass, petrichor – these are all the smells of an English summer but are any of them as representative as the smell of lighter fluid and charcoal as the inpatient chef commences combustion on another marinated masterpiece?
While fire may be the measure of the hospitality of the English host, water is at the centre of the world of any English gardener. The interesting thing about a water butt is that it is absolutely no bloody use at all when it is full, because filling it requires the heavens to open. And after a few days of dry weather, it’s empty, unless one is the sort of gardener who is able to make Sophie’s choice about which of your thirsty plants are going to get a drink today.
The reason that the English react so badly to hosepipe bans is not because they like to wash their cars themselves. In this age of metered water it is now actually cheaper to go to a municipal car park where half of the bloody spaces have been taken over by some blokes with a shitload of fairy liquid and a jet wash and have them do it for you, but rather because they genuinely cannot fathom why, when rain seems to fall, for free, out of the sky every single fucking day, water companies can’t hold on to some. Have these incompetent arseholes tried putting out some buckets? No? Why not?
Labels: England, Gardening, Gardens, Society, Television
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