Anne Wareham is making me think. Again. And it’s not comfortable, but then deep thinking rarely is. It’s one of the reasons life has become so shouty. It’s much easier to shout than to pull apart arguments, examine them thoroughly, and answer them with a cool head.
But back to Anne and her series of many fascinating questions last week – a succession of, as she says, ‘garden moans’ that made me smile, but also pricked – which tells me that I either have an immediate answer for her, or feel the weight of her censure.
…which is not necessarily a bad thing.
She hooks me from the start:
“I’ve been good. And nice. Complimented some gardens and shown you great photos. Given you lots of links and a place to go for a super holiday. So maybe you’ll let me have a few moans?”
22 Moans as it happens. And I enjoyed every one, even if I didn’t agree with them all. I urge you to read them for yourself. Because they are not so much self-indulgent moans as they are observational queries – some of which we’re not supposed to query any more.
I’d like to pick out one of them, though I would happily (and no doubt irritatingly) answer all. Another Moan (#9) is so on point, and has been so equally infuriating to me, that perhaps I’ll save it for another post.
Teaching – what is it good for?
Number 5 on Anne’s list of Moans is the business of being told. Specifically:
“Why do we have to be being taught things all the time? I know that I have been gardening for forty years and still don’t know stuff, or forget it. But there must be more to gardens and gardening than endlessly telling people how to do it? I get so fed up with being told what to do!!!!!! Stop it.”
Anyway, there must by now be more garden lecturers, all lecturing each other, than plain ignorant gardeners.”
Cheekily setting aside the fact that the act of telling people where to go for a super holiday is…well…telling people, I’ve argued this particular Moan with Anne before. She is fed up with the lists of things to do on your weekend (à la Gardener’s World), or the monthly reminders on a blog (like mine), or the seemingly endless, slew of nonsense “Tips and Tricks” that keep the clicks coming, but have people running in all directions.
Furthermore, the “follow-me-I’ll-follow-you” social media culture of the last ten years is painfully illustrative of her last, acerbic observation.
Fair enough. I can certainly understand her annoyance in a world saturated with youtubers, tiktokers, podcasters, and – at the end of the line, cap in hand – writers, all recycling the same old same old. But market saturation doesn’t negate the real presence of a great many people who genuinely want to garden and want guidance.
Plain…ahem…Ignorant Gardeners DO Exist
From pruning dogwoods to sowing poppies – they are looking for help, because they are hesitant to experiment.
These gardeners haven’t yet discovered that curiosity and flexibility is the point, that there are few things more satisfying than finding out the answer for yourself. And they need a shove in that direction.
That starts with finding a unique voice they trust, with information they can practically use. And hopefully, that voice slowly and surely gives them wings and helps nudge them out of the nest so that they too can help others. It’s not The Garden Answer. It’s about finding many garden answers.
Fergus Garrett has often said that the aim of his mentor, Christopher Lloyd, was to make him a better gardener than Lloyd himself.
Building, not Hoarding
Human development rests upon the sharing of hard-won knowledge. It is likely an evolutionary tool coded into our very genes, and I argue that it is not the teaching instinct that should be questioned, but the instinct to keep knowledge to oneself.
Anne may not wish to recognize it, but she continuously teaches – through example.
Her series on building The Veddw is an expressive and illustrative form of teaching – as is her penchant for challenging norms and inviting discussion.
Learning from Anne at The Veddw. But does she realize it?
From grainy photos, lavishly captioned, to digital images of newer victories and heartbreaks; the moments she and husband Charles Hawes continue to share (even as they query their own methods and motivations) have gently picked me up in numerous low moments and set me back on my feet with a better plan. And from reading comments, I know I am not alone in my gratitude.
Asking “WHY” is not only the key to successful garden design, but it is the beating heart of scientific inquiry and The Enlightenment, and when we feel pressure to stop asking ‘why’ in the face of things that simply do not make sense; or in the reductive but popular communication of complex systems, we stop learning as a species.
GardenRant was started nineteen years ago by four women that felt similarly.
To my mind, it is not teaching that warrants Anne’s ire, but preaching. And there’s a lot of it about. Not so much the ‘to-dos’, as the ‘you-musts’. Or worse, ‘what’s-wrong-with-you-if-you-don’ts’ – which I thought we’d dispensed with somewhere between Martin Luther and Martin Luther King.
Still, thinking is hard, memes are easy, and conformity often pays off in the great race to the top – if not for the human race. We like to tell each other what to do. Often very stridently.
What’s The Mark of a Real Teacher?
Yes, there are egotists. Those for whom the point is the podium, not the process. Let’s set them aside for a moment.
Because yes, there are many purveyors of simple How-To out there, and they have an important role to play. They are a first step.
Rarer are the true mentors. If we are lucky enough to find one, we yearn to sit at their feet and learn.
They cannot teach us everything – that’s not the point. Instead they guide us to curiously and courageously approach the many conundrums ahead of us, and in doing so, encourage us to surpass their own abilities for the benefit of generations to come.
The difference between a great teacher and a platformed egotist is gentle curiosity. Especially in the face of questions that could threaten that platform. Despite her protestations, curiosity is a quality Anne has in spades. She is a teacher whether she likes it or not. -MW
Marianne, I so appreciate your eloquent appreciation of Anne.
She is a treasure and so are you.
My own gardening journey has been one of following my instincts in terms of design. I ultimately discovered that I having been recreating and reimagining the gardens of my childhood. I try to learn from planting mistakes and not repeat them. I am on the side of waiting and watching to see what happens, who is happy and spreading, who is wilting and sad. Our ultimate teachers are the gardens themselves.
I realized some years ago that in my garden I am trying to recreate how I felt as a child in my grandma’s garden. When I started seriously gardening was when I bought her house. I spent awhile wishing I could find the chrysanthemums that came up to my shoulders….then realized I was remembering them from child height. This is probably why my favorite perennials are very tall ones.
How lovely a thought – the tall ones are indeed the best. Perhaps this is why my garden has so many tall arbors.
Thank you Tove — I agree (and I bet Anne does too) — gardens are incredible teachers. –MW
Agree with Tove (above) – the best teachers I have known in my *ahem* many decades of growing are those who guide and share – and would balk at “teacher” – they are just sharing what they know and love – gently.
For me personally, garden writers – Anne and Marianne among others who I love to read on this rant, are conduits for a universal spirit that comes from the energy systems that are the gardens about which they write. This writer’s lens is a gift. To speak eloquently, sometimes provocatively, about our intimate and sometimes heartbreaking relationship with all of our gardens, past, present and future, is marvelously life affirming.
I so love this Marianne–the act of thinking about thinking. I have been fortunate to have some very gifted teachers over the years, as well as some who tried but were perhaps less successful, and we’ve all had the ones who just didn’t really bring it. What I have observed among the most gifted teachers is that their enthusiasm for teaching and sharing knowledge is mirrored by their own curiosity in ongoing learning and self-education. They rarely consider themselves masters of their subject, although they may acknowledge their comparative mastery and then share their knowledge and skills with the rest of us. Genuinely enthusiastic and skilled teaching, whether informal or more structured, is not just a gift to individuals but to society as a whole, and finding those amazing mentors often makes all the difference in engagement.
Couldn’t agree more Heather. That curiosity mixed with command presence and a humble approach to what is not known is an intoxicating mix for students. You feel like you are on a journey with the instructor — carried along. –MW
Teachers: for me? Books. Several hundred! And – the garden, as Marianne recognises in her comments on my posts about making Veddw.
Learners? In short supply. Most typical for me is the person who asks me what to do about some garden problem or possibility and, when answered, tells me what they do. Which is – to enlighten me – why they asked.
Weird but very common. Me, offering a suggestion (you’re right – I do it all the time….!) – remember that most questions are not genuine requests for information.
Curiosity – you’ve nailed it, Marianne. That is where learning and teaching dissolve into one thing potentially. The great driving force.
“Most typical for me is the person who asks me what to do about some garden problem or possibility and, when answered, tells me what they do. Which is – to enlighten me – why they asked.” — yes, probably. But also there is just a possibility that they are asking for confirmation that what they have done is okay (from someone they respect) — and want to hash out another approach? -MW
Sadly I’m not eloquent enough to convey the deadening and recognisable nature of this type of query, which I’ve had so often that I have come to regard it as a phenomena in its own right.
I have for many years now examined in my head whether questions of many different kinds are a genuine request for information (sometimes by inquiring directly of the interlocutor). I think this helps develop what we use to call in therapy a ‘crap detector’.
Practice makes perfect, Marianne: try it. And, warning, if you ever question me that way I’ll clout you. Xx
I believe what you said about Anne and what an inspirational teacher she is because I glean from her writings. My Grandfather was a shell-shocked WWII veteran who rarely spoke. As a youth I observed his interaction with plants in the garden which spoke volumes to me. He was the catalyst for my love of gardening thereafter. I still marvel at his ability to get us kids into the vegetable garden to chomp on some rhubarb. He’s say with a big grin, “It’s good for what ails you.”
Anne is a true thinker—an ambitious gardener who’s honest about both her expertise and her limits. It’s genuinely refreshing, especially beside the garden-coach influencer scene so ubiquitous in the States (and right here). The swagger of the self-taught coaches loses its charm once you see their decidedly average suburban yarss. Anne’s intellectual honesty is a model worth emulating