Readers of this blog will know that I am against, or at least against certain aspects of Nature as they effect a garden. Rabbits and slugs are my chief enemies, as are certain weeds, my No.1 enemy in this department being what I call the creeping potentilla - I assume potentilla reptans - which not only creeps but comes with a very long tap root, which is almost impossible to get out without breaking. The same is of course true of the better known bindweeds, though in their case it is not a tap root but very fine thread, at least in the case of the smaller variety - convolvulus arvensis - which breaks even more easily. Still I remain fascinated by the problem of how to define a weed, the convolvulus family being a case in point. Some we accept happily, including C.althaeoides with the pretty pink flower, which if it likes you is extremely rampant, and others we hate, as they are indeed a major bind.
I was thinking about this the other day when I was admiring a meadow verge consisting almost entirely of the wild carrot - Daucus carota. In fact at this moment it is difficult to miss, in my book a slightly smaller cow parsley, and I see that in America it is called Queen Anne's Lace, the name we give to cow parsley. One of its features is its seed heads, difficult to describe - in some ways like a minature version of the recent olympic flame! - but very attractive. Some people may grow it deliberately but I have never seen this myself, and I wonder why. After all, Ammi majus, another cow parsley look alike practically became a 'celebrity' plant a few years ago, pushed by such as Christoper Lloyd. I have nothing against Ammi majus, except that my rabbits seem to like it, but I am not sure that it is any more attractive than the Wild carrot, though the latter clearly does not have the same sex appeal.
But all this has been something of diversion from worries about Nature, and the fact that any p.c. gardener is supposed to welcome it in all its forms. Some years ago now I resigned my membership of the RHS on the grounds that it was turning itself into an environmental pressure group rather than a society to promote a love of gardening. Looking through some recent editions of its magazine, 'The Garden', I see that nothing much has changed. It now appears to have regular section on Wild Life; in March this year, the subject was the common earwig, and in June the Green tiger beetle, which at least sounds a bit exotic. In April there was Nigel Colborn telling us not to mow our lawns, a kind of mantra for the back-to-nature gardeners. However by June he seems to have changed his mind. Commenting on a photo of a garden in Twickenham he remarked that 'a carefully maintained lawn makes cool clean contrast with cottage style planting', and of course it does. Most hands-on gardeners are aware that the quickest way to give a lift to a garden is to mow the grass, and this applies even out here where very few of can aspire to anything so smart as a lawn. But the fact is that grass even as brown as ours is at this moment looks better than a brown hay field. Some of you may know of the famous Long Border at Great Dixter, one of the glories of the English garden, but for me ruined by the end of June by the adjoining hay field or 'meadow', as we should now call it. These can look good in the early part of the year, but even then they are a distraction rather than an aid to flower beds or topiary, and by high summer they are just a mess.
I must not get too excited about these 'green' trends, though I notice that we should now talk about 'green' rather than gardening skills. I personally am very fond of birds and butterflies, and seem to have plenty in my garden, despite the occasional use of weedkillers, etc. In fact I do not use pesticides in any great quantity, not because I am against their use en principe, but because on the whole I have never found them very effective. So as in most things in life there are compromises to be made, and a bit of common sense goes a long way. But by definition gardening implies some control of nature. Otherwise one would just do nothing and let nature take over. Any control suggests conflict. It need not be out and out war, but gardening is different from 'Wild Life', which is why I find it rather tedious of the RHS spending so much time on the latter. Meanwhile I had better go out and check whether there are any Green tiger beetles lurking in the undergrowth !
