COUNTRY LIFE Peter Quince
Gardeners tend to come in one of two kinds, I have noticed. Either they are content to restrict their efforts to the general encouragement of nature along the lines she is normally inclined to follow, or they go about things in a more masterful way, as though the true art of the gardener lay in the creation of a sort of miniature alternative to the natural order, in which nothing grows in the way it was intended to. There is something to be said for both schools. The one produces idealised versions of the English landscape, the other achieves triumphs of formal discipline and horticultural expertise.
I belong in some humble corner of the forrher school, not merely, I confess, because temperament places me there, but also because rather less work is involved. The matter was crystallised for me the other day when, with a gardening friend of the more austere sort, I was lazily occupying a seat in the May sunshine and looking with pleasure at my expanse of lawn, at present richly spangled with daisies. I was about to remark on the happy circumstance which produced this profusion of flowers without requiring any effort on my part, when my friend spoke before me. "You really will have to clear those daisies out of the lawn," he said.
I see his point, of course, and I share his admiration for a smooth greensward uninvaded by daisies or any other alien growth. But I also like to see my handsome carpet of daisies, and since they are there, and nature appears to wish them to stay there and encourage them to flourish to that end, I shall leave them in peace. I could spray poison on them, and spread fertiliser, and re-seed the grass, and so on; but I do not suppose I shall ever bother to do so. In such a case, it is a convenience to have a handy theory about the duality of gardening, to reinforce one's strong inclination to leave well alone.
One must never permit an idle theory to interfere with one's pleasure, however, and I have, while practising laissez-faire in general, begun experimenting with its absolute opposite in gardening terms, namely topiary, the clipping and training of bushes into shapes which simply do not exist in nature's scheme of things. I often admire the sculptural effect of lovinglytrimmed box and yew, provided the topiarist's fancy has not led him towards Disneyesque vulgarities. So, when I found some time ago that an old (and untrimmed) box tree had presented me with several thriving seedlings, I thought I would try my hand at a little closely-disciplined gardening for a change.
I sought advice from an old man in the village who has conjured a peacock and several geometrical shapes out of the upper part of his hedge, and he told me that all that was needed was patience — a reply which seemed to me to succeed in being at once both illuminating and unhelpful. However, I transplanted, and clipped hopefully with a pair of scissors, and the seedlings are now beginning to show some distant resemblance (if one brings one's imagination keenly to bear) to the dense green spheres which will one day, I like to think, stand as sentinels at various nicely-chosen points in the garden. It is rather agreeable to attempt this fine control of plants on so small a scale, and I can understand the fascination of that Japanese craft of producing midget versions of forest trees. It was discouraging for a few moments when I discovered that a nurseryman I happened to be visiting was offering perfectly-shaped specimens at what seemed rather reasonable prices; then I persuaded myself that the satisfaction from this sort of enterprise comes from doing the job oneself, and that buying ready-made topiary would be like ordering books by the yard to decorate one's rooms.
I even wonder, now, whether it is possible that the attraction of the process might not lead me, in the end, to withdraw my allegiance alogether from the carefree school of gardening which I at present belong to, so that I come to enlist in the other, rigorously formal school. I doulyt it, and feel that I can rely upon sloth to support my long-held opinions in this matter. Nevertheless, I feel the faint tug of temptation. From my playing about with these diminutive box seedlings, wildly inflated ideas might sprout. I remember that that great gardener, Alexander Pope, while creating the little walks and arbours of his plot at Twickenham, once conceived a project for remodelling an entire mountain, following a classic example of a plan to remodel Mount Athos in the form of a stupendous effigy of Alexander. "If anybody would make me a present of a Welsh mountain," he wrote, "I would undertake to see it executed . . . The figure must be in a reclining posture, because of the hollowing that would otherwise be necessary . . . It should be a rude unequal hill, and might be helped with groves of trees for the eyebrows, and wood for the hair . ." That is the sort of afflatus we topiarists are prey to, as we fiddle about with twigs and scissors.
Previous page
