Garden Centre

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

The National Gardens Scheme

Ambrose Place is one of those peculiar little streets that you rarely come across and never really get to explore, but when I heard the residents were opening their gardens to the public for charity, I knew I had to get along and see them properly.

The significant thing about Ambrose Place is that the ten gardens are on one side of a quiet road, and the houses they belong to are on the other! When you drive along the road, in Worthing, your eye is drawn to the bright courtyard areas that front the houses, and it takes a few minutes to realise that the gardens are on the other side. So on Sunday, off I trotted, camera in hand, to explore this peculiar bit of horticultural mystery.

The first thing I’ve got to say is that there’s a peculiar British disease that annoys me no end – it’s called amateurism, and it excuses everything from rudeness to incompetence. We walked the length of Ambrose Place, with absolutely no idea how we might get a ticket that would enable us to visit the gardens. Most houses had a bright poster in the window saying they were taking part in the National Gardens Scheme, but not one had bothered to put up a sheet of paper telling the hapless visitor how and where to pay for their entrance! In the end we accosted a ticket wielding tourist and discovered we had to walk down a side street and round the back of another house, Ambrose Villa, to get our own tickets. You would have thought that after twenty-four years, they'd have somehow picked up the idea that a few directions would help their visitors no end, wouldn't you?

The second disappointment was that not a single plant was labelled, so although touring the gardens was fun, it was a little frustrating not to know what some of the rarer plants were – in fact, I was very chuffed to be able to identify all but one of the species and at least half of the varieties, but the one that defeated me left me fuming – I still don’t know what it is, and I am determined to find out. Perhaps it's unfair of me to want labels, or at least somebody on hand to ask questions of, yes, on second thoughts, that is expecting too much, after all, the plants in my garden aren't labelled so why should theirs be?

Overall though, the opportunity to visit the garden; to look at how other people cope with shady corners and a road bisecting their green spaces, was very worthwhile and gave me several good ideas for the future – I took so many photographs that the camera memory filled up. This picture shows the most formal of the ten gardens – a simple green space with a single structural feature – very restful!

The All Seasons Gardener at 2:56 AM

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