I almost read a good gardening article in The Independent Magazine on Saturday. It started off well; Anna Pavord admitted that the garden is a pretty miserable place at this time of year … ‘I had decided that the pleasures of the winter garden were only for masochists.’ and ‘The thought of getting my hands in [the ground] is as appetising as dallying in cold porridge.’ Hear, hear! Then she had to go and spoil it by suggesting a planting scheme that you could gaze upon from the comfort of your house, simple to set up at ‘relatively little expense’. It included several Hellebores foetidus grouped together, at £6 a throw, surrounded by some bulbs which she quotes as ranging from £3.65 to £64, i.e. a case of wine in ‘real money’. Why bother? If you look out of the window at this time of year you just see storm clouds approaching – if it isn’t actually bucketing down – and no amount of pretty planting is going to improve that vision. Instead, why can’t we let our gardens have a breather? Why do we expect them to perform all year round? Leave them be and let nature give them the equivalent of a horticultural spa treat: rain seeps into the soil ready to nourish the coming season’s growth; high winds act like a vacuum cleaner in reverse, cleansing the trees and hedges of their remaining dead twigs and leaves before new leaves emerge; leaves and other dead matter continue to break down into nutritious mulch; frost helps to improve soil structure; lightning energises the soil by increasing its nitrate content. Have I convinced you to put that trowel down yet?
So close the curtains, light the fire (or switch on the central heating if you’re city folk), pour yourself a cuppa and watch some TV, perhaps The Constant Gardener, Please Don’t Eat the Daisies or, my favourite, Rosemary & Thyme. Leave your garden in the capable hands of Mother Nature, after all, she’s been doing it a lot longer than you.
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February 6, 2008 at 11:31 am
[...] An argument for inaction [...]