Gardens
Beginner's luck
Ursula Buchan
Some people have a more self- deprecating attitude: `When we moved to the Old School House Grange Lodge, Herefordshire, the garden was a neglected Wilderness of weeds and brambles. We made every Mistake under the sun while we were learning; it makes us blush now to think of it.'
It is those garden owners who can face up to their inexperience, and who do not offend easily, who should benefit from the fact that 1990 has been designated Garden- ing for Beginners Year by the Horticultural Trades Association, which has some 1,800 nursery and garden centre members. The aim of the campaign is to help at least some of the estimated seven million garden owners who do not know a spade's spit from a hole in the ground.
The organisers have settled on a suitable activity, and a plant, for each month; these are to be both promoted by garden centres and nurseries and used as guides by the television, radio and press, who are partici- pating in the campaign with some gusto. Most of these monthly themes are well- chosen although I think it a little unkind to encourage the beginner to plunge into greenhouse gardening, as is recommended for February; better let him first become acquainted with the easier business of cultivating hardy plants outside.
The organisers have cleverly avoided the problem of there being little to do, or see flowering, outside in December by concen- trating their publicity in that month on house plants `for giving'. The effect is rather spoiled for me, however, by the advice to `size up the recipient, their lifestyle, their home and choose the right plant to go with it'. I am glad to say that never, when giving a plant as a present, have I felt it necessary to go in for any `sizing up' of my relations and friends (who would anyway consider it an impertinence) and would have some difficulty defining their 'lifestyles'. Presumably, if this advice is understood and followed, the sales of Sanseveria trifasciata will rocket.
The plants to be highlighted each month include ornamental crab apples (Malus) in May and viburnums in November. They are all, on the whole, worth growing, although no one could accuse Cotoneaster dammeri, for example, of being very excit- ing. Most selected are genuinely easy to cultivate, with the exception of the camel- lias which will by no means thrive every- where. Plants which are suitable are to be given special 'recommended' labels in gar- den centres so that the easily embarrassed may stroll round confidently selecting plants without having to ask anybody anything.
In general, such a promotion is to be applauded. It should prove helpful and not just to the out-and-out beginner. Never- theless, I confess to slight reservations, mainly because the June 'activity of the month' is entitled 'The Outdoor Lifestyle'. The spotlight is to be trained, apparently. on garden furniture and barbecues as well as bedding plants, shrubs and herbs. The idea that gardening beginners need any more lessons on buying swing hammocks than the rest of the population is absurd.
June should be the month for learning how to sow biennials, stake herbaceous plants, cultivate vegetables, control pests, even take semi-ripe shrub cuttings — not for choosing the right grade of charcoal. The campaign is not, after all, entitled Barbe- cuing for Beginners. The trade should take care to ensure that the public does not receive even the vaguest impression that this promotion might be as much about shifting quantities of sun umbrellas as encouraging the uninitiated to become enthusiastic and knowledgable gardeners.
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