This week, Anne shared a post with me from Scribehound – a spanking new, paid-subscriber, UK gardening and countryside platform hailed with much fanfare, mutual-congratulations, (and not a little backlash) on Instagram this autumn.
This post was by Kendra Wilson, a British garden writer who has recently spent six months travelling the US looking at “private gardens that exist for ecology” for a new book on the subject; and who has some predictably zeitgeistian generalizations to make about American landscapes and American thinking as a result – particularly our “unease with the actual world around us” and our desire as a nation to hold the “The English look” in high esteem whilst battling to keep “the very real wilderness at bay.”
I hope I have not been too unfair in my summing up – you will have to become a paid subscriber of Scribehound to measure my efforts. The title of the piece: “Why Are People Still Enthralled with English Gardens?”
I read the post with interest, and felt my blood rise (which was no doubt Anne’s intent in sharing it with me). But I had to ask myself “why?”
After all, over the years I have written here and for other media platforms against the HOA clipboard police; the East Coast holy trinity of arborvitae, lawn, and azalea; the weed and feed turf tundras; and the homogenization and corporatization of our national plant palette. In short, the desire of people – aided and abetted by a thriving industry with brilliant marketing – to accept easy answers to solve ‘the problem’ that is their landscape.
Thus I have sympathy for Wilson’s position and observations; but I feel that her theory that we are all trying to mindlessly and irresponsibly emulate a clipped British lawn and garden 250 years after the Revolution is incorrect. It is a too-predictable talking point of a design movement which comes with an attached framework of morality, and which doesn’t meet people where they are struggling.
From An Ivory Tower
Her assumption begins with assumption: That wild and native should instinctively be preferred as beautiful by the average eye over cultivated and/or inclusively biodiverse landscapes – and if it isn’t, ignorance, obliviousness, disconnection, and a desire to control is most likely at work.
Failing all that – a desire to be like the Brits.
Well who wouldn’t want to be like this? But I don’t think that’s what she meant. [The long border at Great Dixter]
Perhaps more like this. Ish.
It is an assumption I will oppose just as surely as I oppose the HOA clipboard police. For at its core it is a regulation of taste.
[X] is beautiful. You will find [X] beautiful or there is something wrong with you.
Fundamentally this is no different than expecting a lover of wild and wooly spaces to adore mow and blow landscapes or hedging up the ying yang. And for those who shout “yeah, but we’ve got virtue on our side!” you can bet that in a world where cleanliness and tidiness were considered next to Godliness, the establishment held the moral ground once too. Plus ça change…
Would it not be better to begin with a different, less judgmental, premise? Perhaps. But it certainly wouldn’t be as easy to sell in a publishing and design climate that feels that private gardens should “exist for ecology”.
Look at that for a moment. Absorb what that means for average people. Exist. For. Ecology.
Not for you. Not for the kids for whom you’ve worked your rear end off to buy a scrap of land so they can roll in the grass without walking to it. Nor for that moment in the evening when you come home from a long commute and revel in the scent emanating from the non-native orange tree on your patio or sigh at the beauty of the extraordinary Australian Grevillea blooming in your neighbor’s yard and you want to know how to grow one yourself.
Not for you buddy. Current expert opinions will push you towards a native or native cultivar. “They are much more interesting than imported ‘ornamental’ plants” according to Wilson. (Who reaps the visual benefit of our flora and hers on her own soil.)
Nevermind that just down the road thousands of pounds of fertilizer and pesticide are being slathered on a 100 acre orchard of ‘exotic’ almonds pollinated by ‘exotic’ honeybees supplemented by sugar water, and irrigated by massive aqueducts, and a new subdivision just tore up that open space where your kids used to play. This is your problem to solve in your tenth of an acre – and your desire for a Grevillea that seems to grow well here is secondary to that.
Have a nice salvia instead says Wilson. “When there are a dozen native sages to choose from in Southern California, who needs a Piet Oudolf?”
Someone who wants a Grevillea perhaps. Maybe Piet will listen to reason – he doesn’t go all native either.
Oh good. I’m glad homeowners can pick up the slack for Conagra watering their pointless lawn in the California central valley.
What I thought was a Grevillea in an Oakland neighborhood in November, but which sharp reader/designer David Feix has since identified as the South African native ‘Leucadendron salignum ‘Jester’. [That’s what I get for IDing plants I can’t grow on the fly! Thanks David.]
Meanwhile, across the street, the ravishing tapestry of native clarkia and California fuchsia in a fiercely all-native suburban garden.
Could There Be a Kinder Explanation?
Most Homo sapiens may not be gardeners, but we are all 200-300,000 years into a modern human evolutionary journey that subconsciously influences us in our decisions about our landscapes (both in Wilson’s country and in mine).
Here’s a kinder take on those unthinking, fearful, disconnected fellow humans. Over millennia, we learned:
- …to prefer open spaces around our homes, which allowed us to easily scan for predators and aggressors and leave them more vulnerable, not us. [Lawn and/or mowed open space.]
- …to recognize the importance of protection against the sun’s brutal rays [Large shade trees]
- …to erect boundaries against others which created privacy for intimacy and guarded against intruders and competitors. [Fences and walls]
- …to be wary of insects and rodents, as they offered competition for food when resources were scarce, and disease when communities were crowded. [Pesticides and poisons]
- …to prioritize food and medicine as the primary product of precious time devoted to cultivated spaces. [Vegetables over ornamentals]
- …to seek the visual comfort of lush greenery which signified the presence and importance of life-sustaining water. [Green over grey and/or brown, soil over sand, water features]
Are the vast majority of us responding to those evolutionary inner voices as well as we should in the modern world?
No.
But before you damn us by country or by species, remember that there are external voices with great influence who offer solutions for the land upon which we live (but upon which most of us no longer directly rely), and who benefit from encouraging our aspirations towards beauty – once an indicator of our greatest chance at survival.
Meanwhile, the opposition increasingly talks in terms of dogma and absolutes.
A Little Context
The post-Revolution United States was never as much a land of gardeners as it was a land of farmers, ranchers and subsistence agriculture. In the last century, it is increasingly a land of city dwellers and suburbanites – further removed from the realities of the land that supports them, but paradoxically in charge of the policies that shape that land.
Here, we average 91 people per square acre. The United Kingdom averages 720 — which is more or less the population density of the state of Connecticut.
If you live on the East Coast you have a good idea of what that feels like. California, Texas, and Arizona, where Wilson spent a good deal of time according to her post, average 252, 113, and 64 respectively.
Compared to many places in the world, this allows more people more access to land – even though much of it might be considered marginal by gardeners in the Hamptons.
And those people are not necessarily desirous to “garden” inasmuch as they wish to look after the property they call home. If they are not gardeners – and most are not – they sink back into evolutionary hangovers: lawn, tree, fence, green, insect-free. A tomato patch perhaps.
Gardening with extremes
If they live in the East or Midwest or South, where heat and moisture make plants and germinating trees grow like they were on steroids, there are fewer expert voices that fully understand the human desire for an open space and are brave enough to admit that, no matter how inconvenient to the current conversation, it is easier to mow a ½ acre lot of mixed-species, untreated turf, than to care for a ½ acre native perennial garden that stops you from playing catch with your kids – and requires a crash course in horticulture.
Meanwhile, the marketing director of the nearest chemical lawn fertilizer and weed treatment company understands precisely what they need, distorts the vision a little, and meets them on that literal and figurative field.
And unsurprisingly, the next time the homeowner is at the garden center, another bag of environmental disaster goes into the cart.
Untreated and unwatered in a Mid-Atlantic climate, but very useable — and used by yours truly.
Gardening with not so friendlies
If they live in the West or Southwest, where rattlesnakes, scorpions, and mountain lions are more than just fairy stories (this ain’t Sussex baby), they can be forgiven for wanting to “keep the very real wilderness at bay” (not to mention the threat of wildfire) when they settle in the desert subdivisions of Palmdale after crossing the scrubby San Gabriel mountains – the ones that John Muir called “ruggedly, thornily savage,” but Wilson describes as a “ravishing tapestry.”
Given their druthers, they’d probably rather live nestled in one of the old, unique homes and gardens in San Marino along with two gardeners and a housekeeper. They might even like to hire a high-end native plant designer who can not only install a garden they have no talent to create themselves, but do it with bragging rights at cocktail parties.
Sadly, the enormous sum of $425,000 will only get them a 1150 square foot house within an hour’s commuting distance of their job in Pasadena.
So perhaps they can also be forgiven for watering and fertilizing their mother’s rosebushes each night after dinner to feel like they aren’t really living in the desert, or for making a mess of landscaping fabric and irrigation lines when both are sold to them as a fantastic solution.
Our job as garden writers is not to shame them. Nor to insist that they see ravishing beauty in the impenetrable chaparral that borders their evening commute, or make them feel ignorant because they don’t. It is to gently and regionally help them to become curious of their landscape, and find purpose and joy in its unique ecology whilst weaving all that into the limitations and ambitions of their everyday lives.
A view of the Sierra Nevada foothills where I grew up. Note the ravishing tapestry of native manzanita and toyon cut back to create a fire break. If you build a deck over those foxtails, I hope you know what snake fencing is.
Get Real or Lose the Room
I very much want people to step up and play with the wonder that lies outside their front door – not escape it or solve it with chemicals. But that involves a certain degree of realism, a good dollop of humility, and a flexible approach when dealing with your fellow Homo sapiens. Sadly, it’s so much easier to condemn.
Americans are not trying emulate ‘the British look’. They’re just trying to look after the place they call home, and they’re currently stuck between the claws of the marketers and the daggers of the moralists – with bad advice coming from both quarters.
Excellent! Gold stars.
I’ve just read the Scribehound article to which this refers (I’m on the £1 first month trial and won’t be taking them up on the offer to continue).
It’s… well it’s a bit odd. I honestly assumed that Kendra Wilson was American, given the vitriol with which she went for what she refers to as ‘English Gardens’. I’ve lived in the UK all my life, and spent 25 years working professionally in the British horticulture industry; I honestly couldn’t tell you what makes a garden particularly ‘English’.
We have here the classic borders, as you’ve so eloquently shown with your example at Great Dixter. We also have gardens of topiary and mown lawns, wild-looking gardens and the New Naturalistic style championed by Piet Oudolf. Ah yes we have rose gardens that we pinched off the French, we have prairies gardens quietly stolen from the US: We also have a lot of small domestic gardens littered with a chaotic mixture of plants, garden features and toys for kids and dogs. I’m sure you have those in the US too.
The example of an ‘English Garden’ used in the Scribehound article, a strange group of topiary balls and hedges, is not something I would recognise as ‘English’ at all. Indeed it’s the sort of thing that would look ridiculous anywhere.
The whole article gave the impression of someone clawing at ideas with an agenda to fit in with the other garden writers, “the 30 best garden writers in the UK”. Scribehound has been heavily marketing itself as “unleashed”, but has so far managed to prove itself dull, predictable and occasionally unhinged. Maybe there is a lot in common between British and American gardens and gardeners, and long may that continue. Long live American garden writing, especially that which does not fit in with the “best” of British.
Thanks Ben. Brilliantly expressed.
And what about Wildside – where we spent a happy two hours last May? I did want to get into what on earth made her term our suburban garden blueprint as “British”, but the article was running too long already. Thanks for doing so. -MW
Exactly.
A bizarre article, but one I’m sure was intended to create division where division wasn’t needed.
She starts:
“I’m Kendra and on this platform, I’m going to talk about the way people think they think, but often aren’t thinking at all, about their outdoor space.”
Well, I think Marianne (and Ben) think all right!
She is right in that many of us aren’t thinking about our landscapes. But her reasoning is unnecessarily condemnatory and out of touch with the realities of the lives of average people who don’t garden, and don’t have the budgets to satisfactorily outsource virtue-building landscapes that still make them smile.
And I think, like Ben does, that it sniffs of agenda for a new zeitgeistian book that will be happily received in an echo chamber, and is unlikely to sway someone desperately clutching their Grevillea. 😉 – MW
Marianne, I would like to thank you. I haven’t read the Scribehound article personally and so I shall and should remain reserved in my comments regarding it. But as an American living abroad in Europe, I am repeatedly frustrated and disappointed by people’s narrow minded views of our country and its citizens. Though many of the Europeans I meet and speak with have never even set foot in the U.S., they have preconceived notions of who “we” are and what “we” think and seem to find great pleasure in wagging their fingers and looking down their noses at “us”. It’s a real pity. England is my absolute favorite vacation (“holiday” :)) destination, I have visited countless English gardens, have stacks and piles of English gardening books and watch Gardeners’ World every week as my husband reads our kids their bedtime books. What is the point of this “us against them” mentality? Is it just a sign of the times that our differences have become something detrimental rather than something to wonder about with open minds and open hearts?
I wish I could upvote this comment..
Consider it upvoted – I’m doing the same! And Jill – you are so right in your first sentence, it is best to read/watch most things for oneself before taking another’s word for what was said and not said. – MW
Fascinating! I’d never seen the evolutionary forces on our thinking before in a list like that – so good to remember! And I have question about what came next. Who are the “external voices with great influence who offer solutions” that you’re thinking of?
And this was certainly worth saying, and will continue to in this age of vehement anti-lawnism: “It is easier to mow a ½ acre lot of mixed-species, untreated turf, than to care for a ½ acre native perennial garden that stops you from playing catch with your kids – and requires a crash course in horticulture.” Ask anyone who’s made the switch from lawn to mixed perennials – I’m one of them.
And your ending sure sums it up nicely: Americans are.. “just trying to look after the place they call home, and they’re currently stuck between the claws of the marketers and the daggers of the moralists – with bad advice coming from both quarters.” (Though I wonder if gardening instruction from entomologists deserves its own category.)
Years ago when Scott was roasting me at a Brookside Gardens talk (where you took that Dear Gardener picture), he began by talking about open plains and predators and some connection perhaps to lawns — I almost think he mentioned a paper, but I’m not sure. It got me thinking at the time about the many ways our current garden culture might be an evolutionary offshoot of real, survival-based instincts that have long shadows.
It is just a hypothesis; but hearing the more condemnatory (and reductionist) argument of this writer who posits that we are just ignorantly copying our British cousins, brought it up again in my mind, so I fleshed it out a bit more.
Re: the external voices with great influence –as one of the four founders of GardenRant who went after Scotts instead of running ads for them, you should know above all people how influential these large companies are – herbicides, pesticides, and even plants and products.
As an archaeology major in a second career of horticulture, I would not presume to damn the entomologist who comments in matters of home gardening simply because he does so. But that doesn’t mean that the comments/theories themselves should not be debated. Or the ideologies that spring from them. At least on this independent platform. 😉 – MW
I’m not sure I have ever nodded in agreement quite as vigorously as I did when I read this piece. Bravo, Marianne (and to Ben for the thoughtful comment with additional excellent points). I couldn’t agree more with every point you’ve eloquently made, and thank goodness Garden Rant exists as a forum to share such a response in nearly real time.
Thanks Erin – and thank you for the shout out to the platform and vibrant community we’ve organically built here at GardenRant. Debating ideas is one life’s greatest pleasures, and I am thankful for the opportunity to get others involved. – MW
Marianne, love it when you get your buttons pushed. Very enjoyable reading.
Thank you Steve. – MW
Marianne,
I like the way you talk about the average American who isn’t a gardener, doesn’t have the budget to hire a designer/landscaper, and just follows the norm with the landscape. As a (very long-time) landscape designer, I was just thinking, today, how in my youth I was such a stuck-up twit in the garden realm. Thankfully, years and age have conspired to soften my outlook on what makes people happy and I’m okay with most of it…until it pollutes, or kills, or looks like a rug inside someone’s house. Sooo many people over the years have asked for “an english garden” and we have to have a talk about what they really mean. It rarely matches the famous English borders. They would need a full-time gardening staff for that. They just want pretty. And when I can blend pretty and environmentally responsible, I’m quite pleased with the result. And so are they.
Taking time to figure out what they mean is so important – because yes, they do want pretty, and no amount of lecturing people that something they don’t find pretty is pretty is going to change that. Sparking curiosity in their surroundings and identifying the core elements of ‘pretty’ might though. Sounds like that is exactly what you are doing. Thanks for the thoughtful comment. – MW
Well, your example of a Grevillea in your photo is actually a Leucadendron ‘Jester’! There’s always been a bit of dissonance between English and American gardens, (after all the scale and climate are so different), but the influences are truly more regionally nuanced in the USA and culturally the English must compete with Asian and Moorish/Iberian/Mexican influences as well, particularly on the West Coast.
Personally I prefer to mix and match cultural influences and site design influences to combine with the genius loci of the land. Whether that be a walled garden of enclosure or one that is blessed to have expansive vistas of borrowed views. In a real gardening epicenter like here in the San Francisco Bay Area, there’s a strong and lasting trend toward botanical abundance from around the world, or creating urban oasis gardens that could only exist in our local climate. There can be a 100 different motivations for creating a particular garden, and it’s been interesting these past 50 years to see how much styles and preferences have evolved. I mostly like what I see around me in Berkeley, and hope I’m adding my personal bit as a gardener/garden designer to the community ‘s landscape/gardens enjoyment.
David, thank you for your sharp eye – I have notated the caption shamefacedly and made a note of yet another gorgeous shrub I wish I had the conditions to grow.
Your points are excellent. The genus loci is so important, and that is what we must help people struggling with their gardens to find. Once found, it’s intoxicating — challenging, but intoxicating. Thank you for your comments and fact-checking. Love the diverse backgrounds and demographics of our readership! – MW
I feel like we both read different articles. I have re-read and re-listened to the Wilson article several times trying to understand what of it so got your knickers in a twist. I feel like she was simply inviting us (and, really, she could have been writing about Australia or India or anywhere else that the British colonized or exercised control and influence in the last 3 centuries) to embrace the special atmosphere, the specificity, of where we live.
It is possible (if you are a British gardener), that we see very different messages in it. There is quite a debate raging here in America prioritizing native-only and ecology-first gardens and the blanket superiority of native plants for all conditions (not to mention all tastes) — not merely using climate adaptive plants to capture the genus loci. Many of her statements underline this sentiment. I am saying that it is more complicated than easy condemnation of home owners trying to make their properties attractive (particularly in marginal environments). And ‘copying a British garden’ is an extremely reductionist way of looking at it when British gardens are so diverse. Curious if you are an American gardener, or from somewhere else? Thank you for your comment and the continuing conversation —MW
Hi Marianne, I am a gardener in zone 5 Brooks, Maine. I also run a little seasonal plant nursery. I appreciated your original response to Wilson in that all the points you made were great ones. But when I read and thought about her article (much shorter than your response, which, unfortunately seems to be the required Scribehound format), I thought about my beloved books by Lauren Springer Ogden and Ann Lovejoy, both of whom live out west, have a love for the British border/Cottage Style and have worked hard for years and years to translate and educate around adopting more localized (meaning ecologically sound) choices that respond to place and still achieve a fecund tapestry. I think for me Wilson’s article suffers more from a thinness that accompanies its brevity than a judgy stance against American gardening per se. I appreciate the conversation. Thank you!
Scribehound was advertised as giving writers total freedom, so I would imagine it could have been longer, had she wished. (And nicer!)
I suppose I am very conscious of the debates on this topic in America, given that I write for Garden Rant. And I know that Australia has been having debates like this for many years.
I slip up a great deal, given that I have strong opinions and tend to voice them. But I thought that lecturing Americans, and indeed the rest of the world, -quote “the rest of the world wants to be British” was a little unnecessary. And terribly inaccurate.
Marianne, glad you weren’t offended! Not everyone likes being corrected so publicly, but it’s hard to be well-versed on all plants outside your growing climate, so I stay in my lane here in a Mediterranean climate zone, but also love desert/succulent/tropical floras as well and have a predilection to incorporate the look of Brazil and Malaysia after having also lived there for some time. Your article/review was on point! Ultimately the best gardens(in my opinion) respect the locality while also incorporating some element of personal vision and life influences. We’re lucky here in the Bay Area to have the climate, diverse range of growers and an amazing talent base of horticulturists and designers. It’s been a great past 50 years to be in this business here! I’m personally at a point of contemplating retirement as I approach 70, but still enjoy getting some really great clients who appreciate garden design as art and the love for beautiful plants to enjoy daily.
Nice read. We need to recognizes that cities are human ecosystems and we need to make them livable. Yes, we need to reconcile with nature and try not to do damage with invasives and chemicals but let’s acknowledge that, like or not, humans are the dominant species in these built environments. The difficulty becomes the sprawling suburbs in the wildland urban interface, how to mitigate the loss of ecosystems and wildlife, but within cities let’s let gardeners keep them green
Good points Saxon. Thank you. – MW
“Let’s let gardeners keep them green.”
Why?
I think a book about “private gardens that exist for ecology” might be really interesting – not as a source of proscriptions, but in terms of what people are thinking as they pursue that idea.
There may be a tendency to overplay the ‘native-plant Nazi’ characterization, in this polarized era, while ignoring and underplaying the entomological and ecological ones.
Many people accept as given that extensive, green, closely mowed lawns (the Scotts version) are an expression of patriotic Americanism. i recall reading a piece years ago (maybe by Carol Stocker?) that implied that lawn cultists invariably wanted authoritarian solutions to all of society’s problems, and very often were the male part of the household.
However, by polarizing it, what is lost — the un-made connections — are the very real reasons for utilizing native flora; for instance no insects, no birds. Or, our food supply is dependent upon pollinating insects. Bird feeding often accompanies lawn culture: these are hobbies that are separated out of eco-awareness, but pass for love of nature.
Well said. Your advice about humility and inspiring curiosity is universal for all things.