Thuggery in the Shrubbery

 

  

 

 

It’s all too easy to get carried away in the garden centre, no? 

 

Temptation abounds.  This will be familiar and you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about if you’re a real maniac plant collector. 

 

A Hortoholic. 

 

A Plantophile. 

 

 

 

 

You arrive  strongly determined not to splurge.  You try and be strong, but then, just out of the corner of your eye you espy the very thing that you’ve been searching for, for so very long and you succumb.  Resistance is futile, so you pop it in the trolley. 


And suddenly that’s it, the switch is flicked and you’re off darting between the displays capriciously now snatching up anything on a flimsy whim. 

 

It’s like Supermarket Sweep but with pollen. 

 

Or the The Secret Millionaire let loose after being cloaked in compassionate incognito too long, and then rampaging round the casino at Monte Carlo. 

 

I get my wallet out and start spraying cash around like it’s Monopoly money; drunk on plants, intoxicated by their colours, their lushness.  Their coquettish petals fluttering softly on the breeze; they’re so innocent and beguiling

 

 

 

“buy me,

buy me,

buy meeeee”

 

and I’m enslaved.    

 

 

 

 

 

Long forgotten is the £1.79 pack of garden twine that was the original purported intent of the  garden centre visit.  Then, before you know it I’m staggering and groaning towards the till, dragging along behind a trolley so laden that realistically it’d really need Pickfords to haul it all. 

 

Reorganise the car to accommodate yet another boot full of surplus to requirements climbers, shrubs, invasive perennials and trays of mischievously impish and entirely unnecessary though brightly hypnotic spangly annuals;

and so home to assiduously set about trying to realistically accommodate the consequences of another intensive plant binge spending spree. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is now a dichotomy of some magnitude because morally and ethically what I've done is wrong. 

Wrong on so many levels, as practically we have nowhere to home this new flock of tiny innocent lives.  Nowhere to offer them succour to develop and thrive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Though at the time, back at the garden centre, working the impulses of an addict, spiritually it felt valid, it had a purity, because I loved them, each for their own individual qualities and demonstrably enacted that slavish devotion by the purchase of them and so, they are now dependant on me for their survival.

 

BUT ULTIMATELY THEY WILL PERISH. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The stark reality is that the inhospitable conditions we battled in our former garden made it a foregone conclusion that we couldn’t dig anything more into the flint packed clay.  No more could be accommodated. 

 

 

 

Full up. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No room at the inn. 

 

 

 

 

 

No vacancies.

(In my head though)
 

I’m an artist in nature and I’m creating a wonder, a wonderful wonderland.  But the prosaic reality is more crude than that; an unpropitious suburban garden of limiting proportions. 

All we're really doing though is cramming it all in regardless of whether it can compete and exist in the gangland culture of the shrubbery where only the strong survive.  Not giving anything a chance to mature
 

   

Not giving anything a chance to flourish, achieve its full potential, to proudly flower its ultimate bright billowy proclamation.    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The only thing all this really achieves is to produce a gourmet a la carte banquet for all the snails who slide in peckish and roll out again gorged to capacity 

 

Our most commonly repeated mistake in all these years behind the trowel is this overly-ambitious, over planting, going for broke, cramming in too much with youthful exuberance and over optimism and inevitably losing so many delicate plants which are simply not well enough adapted to such conditions; unable to compete against stronger and more robust species which will always dominate.  To demonstrate that survival of the fittest is as appropriate in the flower bed as in any boardroom. 

 

This recurring theme is one error that we’re determined not to repeat here in our USG-Plot.

 

You may have noticed throughout earlier posts, exhilarant entreaties to thrift and economy whilst styling out your plant selections.  This is with good reason.  There’s no point splashing the cash beyond your boundaries.  You’ll end up over accumulating and eventually losing too many costly plants which will be disheartening.  

Other casualties of this cavalier overspend behaviour are the acquisition of too many cell packs of annuals.  For years we’ve had some surplus.  We think we’ll find a use for them but they hang about long after we’ve run out of compost, filled all the tubs and pots and gaps in the borders.  They start to look really tawdry and unkempt and spoil the effect of the rest of the garden, making the entire place look untidy as they grow more spindly, yellow and sickly.  A punishing reminder of the damage that over exuberance at the till can cause. 

 

So, less is more.  You can always top up later or patch gaps next season, but avoid rinsing some serious spondulicks across this summer.  Dial it down at the garden centre, that way you can trouser some change and your garden will look better for it.