The tyranny of Alain Baraton.

By chance the other day I happened to listen to one of Alain Baraton's interventions on France Inter ( roughly 7.45 am. Saturdays and Sundays). Some poor listener was wondering whether it was possible to plant oleanders outside in Northern France, and was firmly told that even if it were so it should not be done, since oleanders only belong to the south of France, just as I suppose camellias and magnolias should only be grown in China, and potatos in South America .  For those of you who  have not come across him, he has become the Mr Gardener of France rather in the same way as Geoff Hamilton used to be in England, which is to say that not only is he a gardener, but is also a 'celebrity'. Like Geoff Hamilton he is also a great advocate of everything 'Green', so that any French gardener who dares to use a weed killer or pesticide is very much in his bad books, so also it seems anyone whose garden is not full of 'indigenous' plants.

As I made clear in my first blog I am not a Green gardener, and even more criminally I am what I think is called a Climate Change denialist, and therefore should apparently be shot at sight, though for the moment I would rather avoid this fate. Instead I want to comment on the notion of a 'Natural Garden', full no doubt of indigenous plants.  For me no such thing exists. At the very best I suppose you could buy a plot of land, and then sit and contemplate it, though even your plot will have been affected by what man has previously done to it. And those of you who have attempted to create a wildflower meadow will know that nothing is less 'natural'. After all even the act of mowing, however infrequently done , is an intervention by man yet alone the removal of all that mown grass so essential to the creation of a wild flower meadow.  I hope that I have already mentioned somewhere Pamela J. Harper's 'Time-Tested Plants', for me the only outstanding book on gardening of recent years, but if I have not I can only strongly recommend it. She is very sound on all these matters taking for me the only logical view that gardening of any kind is an unnatural thing, involving a battle with nature. But it is a battle that should be waged with common sense. It is probably not very sensible to plant trees in the Gers that require a lot of water or dislike great heat. Acid loving plants are for most us dificult to cater for, I was going to say impossible, until I remembered one of the great English garden, Hidcote, where Lionel Johnson by importing huge amounts of acid soil, was able to grow plants that do not like the Cotswold limestone. The fact is that great gardeners take risks, and though most of us do not come into the category of 'great', we do on the whole like a bit of a challenge. Of course we could all grow buttercups and dandelions, but though they might look quite pretty , at least for a time, we would soon be bored stiff, and boredom is what I most associate with the indigenous school of gardening.

Of course questions of what I will call 'gout' do arrive. Ever since I arrived here I have been debating whether or not to plant eucalyptus. By and large they would like the site, though wind might be a problem. As those of you who use Blagnac airport will know, they grow fast, and they are  undoubtedly handsome. But would they look good on a Gersois hillside? The same would go for olive trees. So far I have avoided them, and I should add the importation of very old olive trees from Spain and elsewhere is one of Baraton's bugbears. I have some sympathy with this view, but not I think on what I would call ethical grounds. I am in fact against the planting of any large tree on the grounds that their upkeep – staking and watering – is very labour intensive, and even if you keep them alive, they will not move for at least three years, so you might as well plant small – though admittedly your newly planted olive will not in your life time take on the required 'dead' look. What I am worrying about here is taste, not some moral imperative to save the planet, which is largely Baraton's concern.

Still Baraton is obviously perfectedly entitled to his views, though it is slightly ironic that his day job is that of 'Head Gardener' of Versailles, which must be one of the most artificial gardens ever created, with hardly a 'vivace' in sight. What I object to is the amount of airtime that he is given, and the fact  that another point of view is seemingly not tolerated.  And if I were a specialist nurseyman I would feel very hardly done by. They depend for their living on growing unusual plants not to be found in the 'grandes surfaces', and these by definition are rarely indignenous. They need every kind of support, some of which ought to come from a garden 'celebrity', a little bit more interested than Baraton is in the amazing range of plants that the world provides, many of which can be grown in France.