"Nick" wrote in message

There appears to be a change afoot regarding gardens, especially
lawns.
Peter Cundall recently said something to the effect that lawns are a
thing of the past and appearred to be endorsing the new parched look
of
Australian cities. I suspect he hasnt had sex in a long time.

That is an extremely silly thing to say. You just spent ages telling
us that your suburb looks ghastly, gardens now look they are owned by
yobbos, the State is no longer called the garden State, but then say
that a garden expert who SHOULD notice how hard it is to maintain
lawns in our new drier climate hasn't had sex in a long
time!!!!!!!!!!! If you think that Cundall hasn't had sex lately then
by your own post about dying lawns and yobbos, you indicate that you
must be a virgin.

You may not like not having a lawn but its the new reality unless you
are prepared to do some serious work.

New drought hardy gardens are being pushed.

And sensibly so.

These generally consist of
large areas of gravel and half strangled looking flax type plants
that
you see in deserts.

You haven't looked close enough or hard enough. Look up Michael McCoy
for a start. His gardens do feature gravel but then so do most of the
best gardens in Britain. It's a great medium for keeping the place
looking neat and simply wonderful as a growing medium on the edges of
paths for self seeders.

And if you know anything about gardening then you will recognise the
name of Beth Chatto who is one of Britian's greatest gardeners and
gardens in a very dry location. Get her book on gravel gardening out
of the library and then come back and tell us how ugly gravel is, if
you dare. Her dry gravel garden is qunitessentially lush English
gardening at its best.

It's al labout plant choice and design for beauty not about ow much
water you can waste.

What worries me is what fate lies in store for my garden. I have
invested a lot of time in it and take pride in it. In addition, it
is
the only way I have of expressing my creativity. It's my own little
patch of the world that I regard as a tranquil refuge from a world
that's spinning off its hinges.Now it would seem that I am destined
to
have a yobbo style garden or else one of those appalling gravel
themed
gardens.

Then get off your butt and do some research. You can still have a
very beautiful and traditional garden but you need to make wise plant
choices and have a very small patch of lawn which may not be a grass
lawn.