The Garden
By Judith Schrut email judith0777@gmail.com
How many gentle flowers grow, in an English Country Garden? The Dutch may have their windmills, tulips and canals; the French their lavender fields and vineyards; the Norwegians their fjords and forests.The British love their Gardens.
This national passion for plants has become a metaphor for home, security, freedom, serenity; an antidote to the manmade world; a celebration of senses and the imagination, where climate meets culture and art meets the outdoors. There is perhaps no better symbol for a country where so much conversation revolves around the weather, where a deep relationship with nature has long been feted by poets, playwrights, philosophers and kings, and recited in the most familiar of nursery rhymes. Perhaps Sir Thomas More summed it up best when he said, “The soul cannot thrive in the absence of a garden.”
The garden has held a special place in British hearts as far back as Roman times. Medieval monasteries were famed for kitchen herb gardens, the Plantagenets had their Red Rose and White Rose and the Tudors their knot gardens, while explorers of the time ventured into the world and brought back plants, herbs, bushes and trees. Henry VIII and Shakespeare were both renowned gardeners. The Georgians followed with dramatic landscapes, while the Victorians gloried in gardens with massed flower beds, exotic colours, complex designs and the invention of the public park.
The modern era has brought ‘garden cities’ like Letchworth and Welwyn, wartime Victory Gardens, allotments, bluebell woods and wildflower walks, organic gardening and everyday back garden pride. Every town, village and suburb has its Garden Centre, many with elaborate tea rooms, play trails, animal farms and sophisticated shopping. The Chelsea Flower Show, National Garden Competition and Shed of the Year are flourishing annual events.
Nowadays there seems an insatiable national appetite for gardening on TV and other media. The Great British Garden Revival, Big Allotment Challenge and Show Me Your Garden are amongst the recent telly crop and Gardeners World has been a hugely popular show for almost 50 years. Gardeners Question Time has been pitting BBC radio listeners against celebrity gardeners from village halls around the UK weekly since 1947. There are hundreds of dedicated magazines, websites and blogs like Deadheading, Gravel Garden Joy and Wild About Agapanthus.
If you’d like to share in the nation’s horticultural hysteria, there are many wonderful gardens around the country open to view. We highly recommend Sissinghurst, Hidcote Manor, Beth Chatto Gardens, Great Dixter and Trebah. And in this nation of gardeners, you may just find some of the loveliest gardens in your own neighbourhood.
Further information: www.greatbritishgardens.co.uk www.nationaltrust.org.uk
Photo: Our Gardens, Hulme Community Arts by Judith Schrut.