Readers’ questions: Constant gardeners

Why is there a huge passion for parks, gardens and lawns in Britain?
– Eugene Petrashkevich

Dear Eugene:  thank you for your question – I’ve simplified it from your original version. I understood your question as asking why we have gardens and parks for pleasure, rather than for necessity (to grow vegetables and fruit to eat).

One of the main aims of my blog was to improve the knowledge and understanding of my country amongst Belarusians.  Answering factual questions is easier than explaining phenomena.  This subject is a good example.

It’s true:  Britons are serious gardeners. In 2010, we spent £75 for every person in the United Kingdom on domestic gardens. We have many gardening organisations – the largest is the Royal Horticultural Society which organises the Chelsea Flower Show in May, a highlight of the London season.

Even in our cities, we much prefer to live in houses with gardens rather than apartments as our European neighbours. We have a strong passion for lawns – large flat areas of grass (or газон, лужайка or батист in Russian and траўнік in Belarusian), like those on which tennis is played at Wimbledon. We also love golf – a game for which large areas of maintained grass are essential.

We have some fantastic large gardens owned by organisations like the National Trust which millions visit every year.  London has more green space than, for example, Paris;  much is part of the Royal Parks, but there are other large green spaces like Hampstead Heath.

So:  yes, we love our gardens and green parks.

But why? Understanding human behaviour and feelings is the realm of theory, not fact.  I haven’t found a convincing theory to explain adequately our love of gardens and green spaces.  I’m not sure we are so unique in loving greenery or the natural world.  The Germans, for example, have a particularly strong love of forests.

Let me set out the elements that probably make us stronger lovers of gardens than other nations. 

Our climate is mild and damp. There are relatively few days of frost, so a wide selection of hardy (frost resistant) and semi-hardy (frost tolerant) plants can survive and grow.

The geology across all of the British Isles is varied, with many types of soil. Much of the landscape is made up of low ridges of gently rolling hills. With water widely available, the British Isles are “green and pleasant” lands for much of the year – excellent for growing roses, the national symbol of England.

Despite our lush natural vegetation, we haven’t always been green-fingered.  The European tradition for gardens came from the Romans with their villas (based on earlier Grecian groves?)  In Medieval Europe gardens were mostly in monasteries, growing vegetables for food, and herbs for cures.  It was only during the Renaissance that decorative gardens were revived in Italy and France.

A distinctive English garden developed in the 18^th century, with English landscape gardens.  They were a reaction to the formal designs and lines of plants of the “tamed nature” of French and Italian gardens (though designs of English landscape gardens were as much romantic idealisations of classical countryside, than of the indigenous, British landscape).

Perhaps the continuity of our history has played a part – especially in the preservation of such as the Royal Parks in London, and in the large gardens of country estates.  There were no revolutions to force the opening of, and building on, green spaces in cities or the country estates of the aristocracy.

Affluence helped establish the cult of the garden with the new middle classes that emerged as a result of the industrial revolution. Garden suburbs were a feature in Birmingham, Leeds and other large industrial cities.

Gardening was a craze in the later 19^th century when Britons introduced new plants they had discovered in other parts of the world. Glasshouses became widely available, so that many could enjoy growing frost sensitive plants, especially tropical fruits.  nd the popularity of lawns was helped by the development of the mechanised lawn mower.  The flower borders of designers like Gertrude Jekyll became popular in larger houses, and the English cottage garden in the country villages.

There may also be the cultural factor of British people wanting their space and privacy. What better way than working quietly in your garden? That most anglophile of French enlightenment thinkers, Voltaire, may have been thinking of Britain when he suggested we should all cultivate our gardens.  But having a garden as antidote to the man-made world isn’t a particular British theme.

City parks have long enjoyed popular support, and strong protection.  Even today, emotional debate soon starts whenever there are proposals to build on the “green belts” that ring our largest cities, especially that around London.

As for “The Constant Gardener”, the film about a British diplomat who enjoys gardening:  yes, I too enjoy getting my fingers green.  As I live in an apartment building in the centre of Minsk, I haven’t done any gardening.  I have enjoyed seeing the gardens of the dachas outside Minsk. I envy my colleague in Budapest who lives in a villa with a wonderful rose garden.

But we cannot take our flora for granted. Britain, and the rest of Europe, is suffering from a new disease that we call ash die back, a bacteria that is killing our ash trees. This is not the first time some of our species have been hit by a bacterial disease – elms suffered the same fate in 1970s. The spread of such diseases is why we have strong controls on the trade in plants.

Gardening tends to be for older people. Whether it will continue to be so popular in Britain, I don’t know. Some of the previous fashions have passed – no one grows grapefruit in greenhouses now. But in the era of climate change, gardens are our own meters to indicate whether the seasons are indeed changing or not.