On Sat, 10 Jan 2004 08:50:56 +0100, JennyC wrote:

"Sacha" wrote

We've both just read Roy Strong's book about his own garden "The Lasket" and
he is immensely complimentary about the Dutch and what they do with their
tiny gardens. Small IS beautiful! ;-)

I don't know if you mean now or in the past, but I must say that on average the
'regular' Dutch garden is probably better laid out and looked after than the
average British one !! (ducking down to avoid flames)

Small really is better. In a small garden, you don't have room
for anything less than the best plants, and the sheer size makes
it much easier to maintain to a high standard. In a way, I look
forward to the day when I have a postage stamp garden instead of
the rather spacious place I have today, where parts are always a
mess and there are too many so-so plants taking up room.

This is due to the very cheap prices of plants here. 'Normal' people in Holland
do not really garden as the British do. They don't have to grow seeds or take
cuttings as things are so readily available for next to nothing. They just go
out and buy and instant garden down the garden centre.

The British excel in really good specialist gardens but I am always disheartened
when I go down roads in UK towns where there might be only one 'proper' garden
in the whole street.

Victoria, British Columbia, whence my ravings emanate, has long
been known as "the city of gardens." Over the years, the size of
the average in-town garden has shrunk: lot sizes have gotten
smaller through re-subdivision, and houses & garages have gotten
larger. Yet the epithet still has a grain of truth in it. I
vividly remember returning from a summer trip to Seattle once,
and noticing on my return home that nearly every house in
Victoria has *something* in the way of flowers, even if it was
jut a pot of red geraniums on the front steps.

Hardly a "proper garden", I suppose, but much, much better than
nothing at all.

The gardening here is also quite un-selfconscious. People garden
for their own pleasure without much thought for what the rest of
the world will say or think; by way of contrast, in Seattle one
has the sense that what publicly visible gardening one sees is
often very self-conscious, "look at me, look at me!" This may be
unfair to the Seattleites, but that's the impression one has.
--
Rodger Whitlock
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
[change "atlantic" to "pacific" and
"invalid" to "net" to reply by email]