Don: ‘perfect’ open gardens are bad for you
VISITING open gardens is as harmful to your horticultural confidence as comparing your life to that of a celebrity, Monty Don has suggested.
Seeing perfectly manicured lawns in a garden owned by a member of the public can cause anxiety, the presenter wrote in Gardener’s World magazine.
He said: “Visiting gardens is bad for you. Not only does it encourage too much eating of cake but sets up all kinds of false notions that are ruinous to your garden back home. Dipping into a garden once, or perhaps two or three times in a lifetime, is as close to gardening reality as seeing a celebrity’s photograph and thinking that you really know them. What you see is a very contrived snapshot.”
Claire Laurie, 60, a regular open gardens visitor, said she loved picking up ideas but often came home with “garden envy”.
George Plumptre, chief executive of the National Garden Scheme said he found Don’s comments “puzzling”.
Monty Don, that thoughtful chip off the old
Gardener’s World rockery, has suggested that visiting open gardens can harm your horticultural confidence. It’s like comparing your life to a celebrity’s. There’s something in what he says. It can be dispiriting to see a bushy-tailed clump of acanthus, say, in a walled garden when at home one moth-eaten flower-spike rises lopsided from tired leaves. For all that, a flowerbed-half-full attitude thrives on a garden visit. The National Garden Scheme has 3,700 private gardens open, from Axminster to Acton. Few are vast parterres. Many show what can be done with awkward, shady corners. Some (to tell the truth) show what
not to do. How lucky we British are to poke our noses into other people’s gardens. And, despite the drought, there might even be a cup of tea available.