IT WAS PROBABLY inevitable. Vogue (the British edition) has announced that gardens have entered the realm of fashion. “The stereotypical female gardener is no longer a doddery old dear in a battered straw hat bent double over her Gertrude Jekyll border,” the magazine declared. “She’s just as likely to be a thirty-something high-flier.., with a plant-buying habit that equals her seasonal outlay on Gucci accessories.” Evidence for this development ranges from the circulation increase enjoyed by Gardens Illustrated, the posh glossy that can make the bleakest turnip patch look like Viilandry, to the number of dinner party discussions devoted to the horrors of aphids and the benefits of worm composting.
Frankly, this doesn’t come entirely as a surprise. While I have never spent much time moving in Gucci-buying circles, it is impossible to avoid noticing how practically everyone you meet here has either been gardening for years, has just started gardening, or is dying to begin. It used to be that gardening was something you did when you outgrew more youthful follies, or when the children flew the nest (leaving you with time and possibly even a bit of loose cash on hand). Germaine Greer went so far as to observe that you knew when middle age had arrived when “the hormones turned to horticulture.” Now, apparently, it is deeply important for social climbers of all ages to know that ornamental grasses and hardy geraniums are the dernier cri, and that Christopher Lloyd looks favorably on scarlet kniphofias and species cannas.
I’m of two minds about this. On the one hand, I’m suspicious of fads in general; they don’t last long, and there are some pretty goofy aspects to this one (a fashion magazine chose to ride the wave by putting some sleek young gardeners on the catwalk as models). On the other hand, it’s at least possible that all this attention could help bump British gardening into a new phase, and it is about time for that. After all, we first heard from Gertrude Jekyll rather more than 100 years ago.
The insidious push and pull of trendiness is already undermining certain long-established English garden icons. For example, the late artist Derek Jarman, a hero of the avant gardeners whose own eccentric stone, gravel, and driftwood creation on the Kent seashore was the subject of a popular recent book, heretically dismissed Hidcote, the classic Gloucestershire garden, as “Hideouscote” because it wasn’t “shaggy” enough. Next thing you know, they’ll be trashing Sissinghurst. (Stop the presses: they already are. The famous White Garden at Sissinghurst has been declared trite and obsolete.)
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