Hedge Garden, Veddw © Charles Hawes

Financial Times 1999

Beware Experts Bearing Punitive Advice

The Crown Imperials in pots were a great success this spring. I had intended to plant them in the garden, but it seemed impossible to discover where I was supposed to put them. I consulted the experts in my library and I was told - "will take partial shade," "prefer a sunny well drained position," "it grows best in heavy clay soils or in the better loams," "flowers freely in good soils - avoiding pure chalk, clay and bogs."

I generally pick the advice that I like best, but this time I was defeated and retreated in total confusion to the potting shed to stick them in a pot. Perhaps the best policy is to have only one reference book, but, one expert or many, the vital thing is to pick the expert carefully. A good choice can help you feel you've got a friend and ally alongside you in the great gardening battle, a poor choice can feel very bleak and discouraging. It seems to be a rule of advice giving that the more authoritative and objective it purports to be, the less helpful it is.

Beware writers who never say "I" or "me," but who speak from some disembodied expertise which you suspect they picked up from some punitive college lecturer in Victorian mode, whose theories were principally based on the idea of keeping potentially idle hands out of the grip of the devil. These are the people who will tell you that to plant a hedge you must "double dig a strip of ground 4 feet wide... incorporating about one hundredweight of well rotted farmyard manure into each six to twelve square yard."

When you've finished struggling with the mathematics and ruined your back with the digging, they then hit you in the pocket by demanding that you buy enough hedging plants to put them in one foot apart. When I planted a hedge I was having none of this. Punitive advice provokes my rebellious streak. I decided I might get away with planting my usual way, straight into the turf, with a four foot spacing between each of the very expensive baby yew seedlings. Reader, that hedge is now five feet high after just seven years and the individual plants are all linking up nicely.

The hedges now. © Charles Hawes

The moral of the story is - choose the kindest advice. Which in this case might be mine. Additional kind advice for hedge planters would be - weed kill round the base of the plants periodically unless it rains a lot. Yews seem to have very poor tolerance of being drowned, and I have noticed that those with grass growing round their roots have survived the recent sodden winters in my garden while the carefully weeded ones have not. The warmth of the winter has kept the grass growing and presumably drawing off some of the wet from around the yew roots. Readers in drought stricken areas should look for an alternative expert.

I think the biggest problem with the objective, third person kind of advice, is that it leaves no room for the expert not being quite sure. Understanding the mysteries of plant life would take much more than one lifetime's study. Suspect that anyone being dogmatic about what a plant needs may have failed to discover just how adaptable plants can be with a little talking to and general encouragement. Sometimes, though, an expert who is very sure is a relief. My favourite reference book for trees and shrubs tells me exactly how big, in feet, a tree or shrub will be in five years, ten and twenty year's time. Nonsense, of course, but very confidence building compared with "small" or "large" to work from. I can go out with a tape measure and work out the precise space a shrub will need.

Consider your adviser's credentials carefully. It matters whether their problems are similar to yours or not. You will be able to take their advice with the appropriate condiment if they complain about people wanting to have less work in their gardens when you know for a fact that they have at least one hefty young man doing most of their heavy work. If their authority derives from their fame as a garden designer, remember that their job generally involves directing the labour rather than undertaking it. And the more in demand they are, the less they are likely to have time to gain any new gardening experience from sweating away in - or even closely observing - their own patch. If you garden on clay, beware those who build their expertise on sand.

Consider your expert's climate and compare it with your own. Avoid any expert who writes books claiming to make gardening easy. I notice that for some strange reason these are the people who will tell you to deadhead a meadow full of daffodils or clear ground entirely of weeds before you plant. (Clearly never having heard of plants spreading themselves by seed into nicely cleared ground.) They do not refrain from encouraging you to grow halfhardy annuals, turn your compost heap or plant up a trough with plants that will need watering twice a day. This is probably because they have to fill their book up with something, to make them the same size as everybody else's books.

Your choice of garden experts can influence more than whether your plants grow or your designs are embarrassing. They will affect how you feel about gardening. The double diggers and "start with completely clean soil" types will make you feel inadequate and always a failure at proper gardening. The best experts will free you to experiment and inspire you to risk failure in pursuit of a glorious dream. The do-it-by-the-book-bullies will make you feel it's all slightly worthy. The best advisors will make you feel that it's all slightly decadent and definitely exciting. You should, at all costs, avoid those experts who use the word "should".

Published in Financial Times 22nd May 1999 Anne Wareham

iris sibirica © Anne Wareham