Figure and Ground - a Mid-Terrace Allegory

[steepholm]

Here is my garden. It's not much to look at.



I like my apple tree, and I keep the lawn mown (apart from the bit on the left, which is sacred to the memory of guinea pigs past), and this year I've been squirting the aphids out of their hideouts in the honeysuckle buds with a water spray, so I hope to have some honeysuckle soon. But - well, I'm not much of a gardener in truth.

Sometimes, in 70s sitcom fashion, I look over at my next-door neighbours' place. It's a very different kettle of fish.



It's a bit too everything-in-its-place for comfort, perhaps, but it still makes me feel inadequate by contrast. On such occasions I need do no more than look at my other next-door neighbours' garden to feel like the love-child of Capability Brown and Gertrude Jekyll.



(The missing fence, by the way, is theirs. They've been just about to replace it for four months now.)

So here I am in the middle, treading a path of moderation, a bit like a horticultural Nick Clegg, neither as regimented as my left-hand neighbours nor as chaotic as my right-hand neighbours. I might even manage to convince myself that my garden is really the best garden in the best of all possible worlds.

Then I look at it again, and remember that actually it really is a bit shit.

Comments

[kalypso]

This is the time of year when I think "I must go and buy a couple more shrubs to put in gaps near the fence." I should have done it by now, but I'm behind on everything because of the election. Anyway, shrubs - nice things, you don't have to do much once you've planted them, they please knights who say ni, and my ceanothus seems to thrive particularly well.

Or might you move in a more Japanese direction?

[steepholm]

I am (of course) very tempted by moving in a Japanese direction, but I'm not sure I'll be able to persuade this garden to follow my lead.

[kalypso]

While delivering targetted letters just now, I was horrified to see a front lawn of plastic grass! Particularly as it was a house which used to belong to someone I knew, and I didn't like to think about what he'd make of it. The back lawn still appeared to be real.

[colorwheel]

the one on the right might look more romantic visually, but if i were actually sitting outdoors to have tea, i'd rather sit in yours. then again i am a big old Apartment Jew.

[steepholm]

I can confirm that my garden is indeed very nice to sit in of a sunny evening - and there is a bench for the purpose just outside the house (out of shot in this photograph).

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I much prefer right to left, and like the look of yours very much. Pretty tree.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I also have a mock orange there in the corner,and a gooseberry bush in a pot, just out of shot. This is the extent of my plantings over 9 years. I've never quite made up my mind what I want, gardenly speaking.

[karinmollberg.livejournal.com]

There is nothing like gardening, after all (not that I can afford one) but I can't help quite liking the one on the right; the slightly wild&unkempt one, it looks so much like real life and as if one could just sit down there, in tranquility, with a book and glass of something and reading glasses without being stressed about it, even tea is thinkable as an option. I'd go, er: right in case of doubt...

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I tend to agree, though if I were them I couldn't be happy about not repairing the fence between me and my longsuffering neighbour.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

All that green! All that space!

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I always imagine American gardens to be much bigger - is it not so?

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I guess rich people have bigger ones, or they go the other direction around here--wider because we don't go upward. Timber houses. Our patio is about a quarter that size. The front even smaller.

[vixenofflames.livejournal.com]

That is hilarious. I think I'm pretty similar - not too neat, not too messy. I love it.