Isn’t it wonderful that the Fringe Festival was apparently so successful? Thousands of people turning out to see the gardens, all priced at $2 or less. I am not kidding. Anything that promotes gardening and gets people out enjoying gardens is great. And there is clearly a market for often low key gardens with added attractions such as the The Liquorice Lady and the Rawleighs salesperson, knitting and pickles for sale. A yearning, perhaps, for the nostalgia of the church fete or the early days of the Rhododendron Festival two decades ago.

But now that the Fringe organisers have proven they can do it, perhaps they should no longer be fringe and they should find their own time of the year. How much better to have two separate garden festivals at two different times of the year and have two bites at the cherry? There really is no reason why they should be run at the same time, the very same dates in fact.
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With the excess of open gardens and garden events this weekend, we thought of putting up a poster: “Caution. Endangered species. Garden Visitor.”

Some of us remember the heydays of the late 1980s and early 90s when garden visiting ranked very high as a preferred leisure activity. While other garden festivals throughout the country have flowed but mostly ebbed in the time since, our annual Rhododendron and Garden Festival has managed to hold on and to gain a pre-eminent position as a premier garden event despite the overall decline in visitor numbers.
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The gardening instinct is a curious phenomenon. Gardeners will grow plants and create their own environment no matter where and how they live. While I am writing this column on Patmos, a Greek Island (ain’t email just one of life’s modern wonders?) you will have to wait, dear Reader, for my next column to receive yours truly’s impressions of Greek gardening. Today my thinking is on a late London summer.

I have been to London a number of times in recent years, but it is a long time since I have visited in summer when the trees are in leaf. And goodness, we could learn a thing or two from the greenery of parts of London. The city would be a cheerless brick and concrete jungle were it not for the trees. Big trees lots of them. I am dreadful at estimating heights but there are countless trees which measure three or four stories high against the multi-story houses. Trees which are even permitted to take up the entire pavement so that the pedestrian has to step onto the road to get around them. Street trees where the roots lift the pavement and tilt the front boundary fences of residences. Can you imagine the hue and cry and the pressure on the Council were a street tree to dislodge a concrete block boundary fence at home? These are all deciduous trees (oaks, alders, sycamores and the like) so leaf drop in Autumn will be a huge issue. Garden waste collection in Maida Vale, where I stayed, is on Wednesdays. Continue reading →

Our trade magazine, Commercial Horticulture, keeps talking about the New Zealand do it yourself ethic having been replaced by “Do it for me”. You can see this in the explosion of lawnmowing contractors, section maintenance people and landscapers. Even I will admit that not everybody derives the same pleasure from gardening and being creative with plants that we do here.

But I had somebody in recently who told me a horror story which may serve as a cautionary tale. Uncertain what to do with her large section which had some mature plantings, she engaged the services of somebody who called himself a landscaper. She thought she had made it clear what she wanted – a pretty garden which complemented her period villa. Alas she came home from work one lunchtime to find he had chainsawed out all her trees, including her mature apples and plums. She was simply devastated. This cowboy “landscaper” planned to create a minimalist garden in their place – rocks and spiky things and grasses.
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