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Old 12-01-2011, 12:24 PM
kay kay is offline
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First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Apr 2010
Posts: 1,792
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Sacha[_4_] View Post

And I don't understand this problem with Monty Don quite honestly,
especially on a class basis. Class has nothing to do with gardening
in terms of getting your hands dirty and doing the work. Some of the
keenest gardeners I know are what you would disdain as 'posh', I
suspect and they're never happier than when bums up in the borders! I
think it's worth remembering that without some of the rich owners of
large gardens, we wouldn't have half the plants available to us that
there are now because those people paid for plant hunters' expeditions
and those plants may well be represented in your garden, in some way,
now.
I think there's a lot of truth in this (and I like Monty Don too). But I can understand the other side too. For example, there were a couple of articles in the Garden a year or so back about packets of mixed flower seeds. The general view, both of the original article and of the comments selected for publication, was that mixed packets are naff, that flowers look better in drifts of one colour, and that iff you want a variety, you should separate packets of the colours of your choice.

Well, that's all very fine in a large garden (and I agree with it entirely in that context). But if you have a pocket handkerchief garden, the situation is very different. I could make a very tasteful bed in a selection of two or three related tints. But that would be the only colour effect in my garden, and I would have a a lot of left over seeds from my two or three packets. If I get a mixed packet, then I look at every plant individually, and I can spend half an hour going round my garden rather than seeing it all in one glance.

I can almost hear the shudders from here as you all imagine a garish totally tasteless hotchpotch! But the point I'm making is that, although you can draw inspiration from anywhere, if your source of inspiration is always recommending to you things that are really only practicable in a much larger garden, you can start to feel "I don't really belong here".
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