The nspcg Rule

Our ordinary back gardens may not be particularly beautiful, but almost all show evidence of interest, attention and effort. Gardening is probably the most popular hobby in the country – at the last count, over two-thirds of the population were described as ‘active gardeners’. (Reading this, I couldn’t help wondering what ‘passive gardening’ might consist of – would being irritated by the noise of other people’s lawn-mowers count, like passive smoking? – but the point is clear enough.)

Almost all English houses have a garden of some sort, and almost all gardens are tended and cared for. Some are tended more carefully and expertly than others, but you rarely see a completely neglected garden. If you do, there is a reason for it: the house may be unoccupied, or rented by a group of students (who feel it is the landlord’s responsibility to do the garden); or occupied by someone for whom neglecting the garden constitutes some sort of ideological or lifestyle statement; or by someone who is very poor, deprived, disabled or depressed and has more serious problems to worry about.

This last category may be grudgingly forgiven, but you can be sure that the others will be the subject of much muttering and tut-tutting among the neighbours. There is a sort of unofficial National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Gardens, for whose members the neglect of a garden is on a par with the mistreatment of animals or children.

The NSPCG rule, perhaps as much as our genuine interest in gardening, may explain why we feel obliged to devote so much time and effort to our gardens.³⁰

Class Rules

The garden historian Charles Quest-Ritson boldly rejects the rather pretentious current vogue for studying gardening as an art form, and garden history as a branch of the history of art. Gardening, he says ‘has little to do with the history of art or the development of aesthetic theories . . . It is all about social aspirations, lifestyles, money and class’. I am inclined to agree with him, as my own research on the English and their gardens suggests that the design and content of an English person’s garden is largely determined – or at least very strongly influenced – by the fashions of the class to which he or she belongs, or to which he or she aspires.

‘Why,’ asks Quest-Ritson ‘do hundreds of middle-class English women have a white garden and a potager and a collection of old-fashioned roses? Because these features are smart, or may have been smart about ten years ago – not because their owners think they are beautiful or useful, but because they make them feel good, better than the neighbours. Gardens are symbols of social and economic status’. I would soften this slightly, and suggest that we may not be quite as conscious of the socioeconomic determinants of our flower-beds as Quest-Ritson implies. We may genuinely think that our class-bound choices of plants and designs are beautiful – although this does not make them any less socially determined.

Class Indicators and the Eccentricity Clause

Our taste is influenced by what we see in the gardens of our friends, family and neighbours. In England, you grow up learning to find some flowers and arrangements of flowers ‘pretty’ or ‘tasteful’ and others ‘ugly’ or ‘vulgar’. By the time you have your own garden, you will, if you are from the higher social ranks, ‘instinctively’ turn up your nose at gaudy bedding plants (such as zinnias, salvia, marigolds and petunias), ornate rockeries, pampas grass, hanging baskets, busy lizzies, chrysanthemums, gladioli, gnomes and goldfish ponds. You will, on the other hand, be likely to find box hedges, old-fashioned shrub roses, herbaceous borders, clematis, laburnum, Tudor-revival/Arts-and-Crafts patterns and York stone paths aesthetically pleasing.

Garden fashions change, and in any case it would be a mistake to be too precise and attempt to classify a garden socially on the basis of one or two flowers or features. The ‘eccentricity clause’ applies here as well, as Quest-Ritson observes: ‘Once a garden-owner has acquired a reputation as a general plantsman, it is quite permissible for him to express a tenderness for the unfashionable, the plebeian and the naff’. I would say that being firmly and unequivocally established as a member of the upper- or upper-middle classes would be enough, with or without plantsmanship, but the point is much the same. The odd garden gnome or zinnia does not necessarily result in automatic demotion, but may be tolerated as a personal idiosyncrasy.

To gauge the social class of a garden owner, it is therefore better to look at the general style of the garden, rather than becoming too obsessed with the class-semiotics of individual plants – particularly if you can’t tell an old-fashioned rose from a Hybrid Tea. As a rule-of-thumb, gardens lower down the social scale tend to be both more garish (their owners would say ‘colourful’ or ‘cheerful’) and more regimented in appearance (their owners would call them ‘neat’ or ‘tidy’) than those at the higher end.

Higher-class gardens tend to look more casual, more natural, less effortful, with more faded or subtle colours. Like the ‘natural look’ in make-up, this effect may require a great deal of time and effort to achieve – perhaps more than the pastry-cut flower-beds and disciplined rows of flowers of the lower-class garden – but the effort does not show; the impression is of a charming, uncontrived confusion, usually with little or no earth visible between the plants. Excessive fretting and fussing about the odd weed or two, and over-zealous manicuring of lawns, are regarded, by the upper classes and upper-middles, as rather lower class.

The wealthier uppers, of course, have lower-class gardeners to do their fretting and manicuring for them, so their gardens may sometimes look rather too neat – but if you talk to them, you will find that they often complain about the perfectionism of their gardeners (‘Fred’s a dreadful fusser – has a fit if a daisy dares to rear its ugly head on “his” lawn!’) in the same patronising way that some businessmen and professionals mock the tidiness of their super-efficient secretaries (‘Oh, I’m not allowed near the filing cabinet – I might mess up her precious colourcoding system!’).