Pampas rumpus

Sales of pampas grass have plummeted in a decade, and a peculiar reason has been given. These feathery-flowered exotics from South America, so popular in the Seventies, have gained a reputation as a flag for the practice of wifeswapping (as it was called in the Seventies). On the face of it, such a use of an herbaceous perennial seems unlikely. Even if one wanted to swap a wife, or husband, one would hardly want to do it at any hour of day or night, all round the gardening year. Might there be another reason for the decline of the tow-headed grass? After all, kaftans or cheese and pineapple on a stick were also popular in the Seventies, but, while admirable in themselves, are now seldom seen. Gardening, like clothes, food or sexual behaviour, goes by fashion, and nothing swings so decisively as fashion’s pendulum.