Garden Centre

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Gardening - a little rant ...

Doesn’t this kind of thing annoy you? It drives me absolutely spare!

It’s bad enough that half my neighbours are turning their front gardens into paved deserts, just to have somewhere to park their cars, without my little bit of green becoming a living bin.

1 – if you have to pave your green space, can’t you at least have a couple of corner beds that house small trees or shrubs and an under planting of native flowers? You could be saving the lives of countless insects and birds by giving them an oasis in which to rest before moving on to the next green space, and it would provide a bit of run off for all the water that will otherwise have to fill the drains and – quite possibly – flood your house. And I’ve got to say, I think it serves you right if that happens. One of the major reasons that the floods this year were so bad was that this kind of paving or slabbing or bricking of front gardens means that water which used to be soaked up by the soil or taken deep into the ground by thirsty trees and shrubs now sits on the surface and has nowhere to go.

2 – why does every drunkard in the South of England choose my garden for his bottle, can or chip wrapper? Some of them are so carefully inserted into the hedges that I think there must be a litter fairy who is just picking on me! But there will soon be a shock in store for all these litter depositors – behind my evergreens I’ve planted berberis and once the spiky, spiny, impossible to remove, barbs dig into their hands, they’ll be sorry!

Labels: berberis, garden makeovers, garden planning, garden vandalism, litter

The All Seasons Gardener at 12:26 AM

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