PUBLICATIONS

Issue 45 - Summer 2008

EDITORIAL - WHICH CAME FIRST, THE GARDEN OR THE SHOW?

I was recently asked by a TV company to be a judge on a show called Super Garden. People who wanted to be garden designers, but who had no experience of doing it, were selected by a team of judges, and then by interview. Out of several hundred applicants, five were finally selected, given ten thousand Euro, matched up with clients, (all of whom had similarly-sized back gardens), and were sent off to make their gardens.

One of the most interesting things that I learned from my experience with the show was that so many people really do want an ‘outdoor room’. They actively do not want any maintenance, have no interest in plants, want covered space for outdoor ‘living’ - in other words, they want somewhere to relax. Relaxing is now a hard-earned glass of wine at the end of the day, or flopping out in one of the many sofas dotted around the terrace. It certainly involves only a minimum of active engagement with the garden.

The other thing that surprised, and slightly disturbed me, is just how desirable our jobs apparently are. The premise of the show is that ours is a profession one can take up merely through the love of it, albeit with one or two short courses, perhaps, under the belt. Yet anyone setting up as a doctor, lawyer, plumber or electrician, with no more than a burning passion for the subject, (combined with a desire to change career), would be laughed out of the place. The fact that some garden designers confess to knowing next to nothing about plants is comparable to a fashion designer who doesn’t know their fabrics or an architect who doesn’t know their architrave from their escutcheon plate. It may be the view of a traditionalist, perhaps, but in my opinion, plants are still the stock-in-trade of our profession; whether you use three plants or a thousand, you need to know about them.

One day, during the filming of one of the episodes I said something to Mary Reynolds, one of the other judges, along the lines of, ‘does anyone watch this anyway, and does it really matter what we say? Does anyone pay attention to it?’ Her reply was very definite: ‘Oh God yes. What people see on TV makes its way into their own gardens down the line. You’d better believe it.’

Since then, I have been thinking about this conversation, and she is right. Go back a few years, and gardening shows were all about dead-heading roses and pricking-out your leeks. There was a wealth of complicated horticultural knowledge from which viewers could glean snippets of information from, to practise in their own patches. And this they plainly did - it doesn’t take much to see a garden planted and maintained under that regime.

Designers and TV presenters like Diarmuid Gavin have been hugely influential in de-mystifying the garden for millions of people. Rather than being bafflingly complex horticultural organisms, gardens can be places of simple enjoyment and fun. Hand in hand with this are the show gardens at places like Bloom and Chelsea, overflowing with sun loungers, cushions, lights and cooking areas. It’s terribly alluring, but is not as easily imitated as people may think.

Sadly, gone are the days when an activity such as gardening is considered relaxing. The holy grail of the modern era is ‘pampering’, luxury weekends away from it all and ‘duvet days’, leaving the more mundane tasks such as cutting the grass, washing the car or even walking the dog as chores.

This issue of Compass focuses on shows, and in particular this year’s Bloom in Phoenix Park. Helen Rock sees the positive influences of show gardens in the gardens of her neighbourhood; Susan Maxwell reviews the recent Bloom show; and Sheena Vernon tackles the question: ‘Why do a show garden’?

Tycho Mays MGLDA

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