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Snowdrops
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] |
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