Non gardeners commenting on my garden

[TinklyLittleLaugh]

My garden is a glorious cottagey tangle of foliage and flowers. It does not just happen; it requires careful plant selection and regular pottering/deadheading/snipping back. But it is my pride and joy, my main creative outlet and, at this time of year, is looking to my eyes, quite breathtaking.

So far this week, various friends and family, none of whom know anything about gardening beyond occasionally planting assorted garish bedding in regimented rows, have commented;

"Of course your sort of garden is just low maintenance, for people who don't like gardening."
"It needs a good hacking back and clearing out doesn't it?"
"Well it's a bit of a jungle, you can't even see any soil."

Obviously everyone is entitled to an opinion, but I would never be so rude as to criticise their pathetic gardening by numbers efforts.

That would hack me off.

I think if you're not a gardener, it's hard to understand just how much effort the 'natural look' takes. It's like makeup more effort is required to look effortless.

The whole bare-earth thing is a taste issue. I love cottagey tangles. If I see bare earth I'll either plant it or mulch it. I can't stand 'municipal-roundabout' planting. On the other hand, DH much prefers things to be 'neat'.

There may be disagreement ahead

How rude of them!

We moved into a house with a cottagey garden and pond and ripped it all out as we knew how much hard work it would be! And we are non gardeners. We replaced it with grasses and mulch, much easier for us.

We moved into a new street a while back and all the tiny front flower beds had that boring shrubby typical crap that builders always put in. I pulled all mine out and while it could look better it's a mass of various (mostly perennial) flowers that are bright and beautiful and cheer me up, and I think it's lovely. Admittedly for this I have sacrificed anything at all for winter when everyone else's crappy shrubs are still there. DH thinks it's the worst flowerbed in the street. I find it upsetting and irritating but just think he's wrong. I'd LOVE a garden like yours if we had space and am very jealous, fuck 'em

Your garden sounds lovely!!!

Oh, I'm so pleased someone else feels like this.

I get this insane rage anytime someone describes my garden as 'a traditional cottage garden'. I want to leap up and down shouting 'can you not see it draws inspiration from the fucking New Perennial movement, with a strong influence from the Sheffield School?'

But no, I smile and say thank you.

your garden sounds lovely.
just keep doing what you are doing, you enjoy it and it looks beautiful that's what matters.

I don't care about what other people think. I love my garden. A touch of Gaia in a concrete street. Full of wildlife, bees, butterflies, fruit trees, fairies. My neighbours think it is a mess, but I planted most and keep the things that just appeared and I liked. When we moved in it was a patch of mud with old fences, concrete foundations and rubbish.

I will be moving soon to a house with a barren patch of lawn.

But I'm not too sad- I have created gardens and left them before- I relish the chance to see that miracle of growth burst forth under my hand.

These comments remind me of other things people say about my life- "well it's OK you are naturally slim and fit- you don't have to worry" em no- I spend 5 hours at the gym a week.

Or- "you are lucky -your teenagers are naturally well behaved" - thanks for that too. Nothing to do with my input either then.

Yanbu but hard to judge without a photo! I love cottage gardens but not plants that are out of control. But if you love it, it doesn't matter about everyone else's opinion.

Your garden sounds lovely tinkly of course other people will comment on it (especially relatives) and of course they might think differently to you but it is your garden so it really doesnt matter that much what they think. What matters is what you think.
This time of year my garden looks jungly and naturalistic and no bare earth and this morning in an effort to stop it looking like a cluttered room I edged the lawn and weeded and did a chelsea chop.
If someone had said to me it looked overgrown and jungly I suppose I would have sighed and agreed but luckily I dont invite too many people round and those that do come round are very happy to sit in the swing seat and eat ice cream and drink elderberry cordial and admire the flowers and chat about what could go where if I was energetic enough to move anything etc etc etc
Someone somewhere once mentioned that gardeners are not sociable which is why they like gardening. This probably describes me to a t.

It is quite a good time of year to move stuff in my opinion because there has been a lot of rain, also a good year to lift and divide stuff for the same reason.

I have two responses for these sorts of comments.

a - 'That's the idea!'
b - 'It's a trial'.

Then walk away and do some deadheading/weeding/pick some calendulas or herbs to dry out in the airing cupboard.

Tinkly your garden sounds gorgeous and I am slightly jealous. I have no idea about gardens - mine is nice and I've done a fair bit since we moved here but it's pretty sparse I really and I'd love it to be more abundant looking. No idea where to start! Ignore the naysayers, your garden is not for their benefit

Thank you ladies, it's not so much the comments but the uninformed nature of the comments.

I'm so glad most of you get it. I will post some photos if it stops raining. In fact we should all post photos and have a mutual appreciation thread.

Yes, funkybold I agree, one could also pick edible borage flowers and put in the salad just to heap coals etc.

Its a fine line between jungly and naturalistic. This week I have been remembering the beds at Great Dixter in early spring: the gardeners mark each bed out in irregular polygonal sections with straight sticks and then plan what to plant in each section, taking account of needing something for each season.
At Chelsea the planting is often of fairly young plants interspersed with others to make their plant paintings. That sort of planting- of 3-4 types of plants all mixed in with each other - can't be easy.
If one plants in blocks and swathes, then the blocks and swathes, certainly in my garden, all overrun by this time of year. It would be interesting to know how to manage perennials so that they provide flowering clumps not more than 2 foot in diameter, but I suppose that would simply be a different sort of regimentation and that planting would no longer be naturalistic.

Sorry I just realised what I really meant to say is that only the ignorant can possibly imagine that the naturalistic garden doesnt take any work.

I think I would be more upset by the comments if gardening friends made them. Only gardeners realise the amount of planning,creative effort and sheet hard work it takes to create and maintain a garden. Bare soil just means weed seed bed to me so I try and have none visible! Grow how you want to and sod everyone else's opinion!

Chelsea gardens are more like flower arranging though surely. They are basically a snapshot of a garden that needs to look good for a week. I am absolutely not belittling the massive degree of skill and artistry required, but there are different considerations when you plant a garden to look good for many months, indeed, many years. (My own garden is pretty dull in the winter, and actually even late summer is not great.)

Tinkly your garden sounds lovely. Mine is cottagey too, the nicest style by far IMHO

Agree with Tinkly, cottage style looks great in spring and early summer but is a harder trick to pull off year round. I have invested in some more topiary balls and cones this year (Aldi bargains) that I move around to give mobile structure, and am starting to revamp areas that have not had much done to them in years. I am also utilising more plants and bulbs in pots to fill gaps, including a load of dahlias grown from seed, but the obsessive in me is waiting for them to bud up so I can see what colour they are going to be before I place them!

I have some lovely white borage this year. Had one plant last year and it was a little pathetic; let it set seed and this year it is astounding. Most of my plants are left to set seed and it means I don't need to do anything except move the seedlings if I want to put something else in. Most excellent.

I seem to have lost a lot of my late flowering perennials, echinacea type things, over the last few winters. I have lots of cosmos seedlings ready to fill some gaps though.

I don't blame you for being cautious with your dahlias Shobby, I have an orangey red poppy (sold to me as Patty's Plum) that simply swears at me out of a sea of purples pinky bluey shades. I have dug it up twice now but it keeps coming back.

We have a similar garden just up the street from us. We call it the fairy garden and I am filled with daily envy when I walk the dog. Next door to them is a garden, which come a month or two, will have its square lawn edged with begonias and lobelia at precise intervals, with lots of bare earth in between. How anyone can prefer that I have no idea.

Funny you should mention losing perennials the past few years, I have lost plants I grew from seed years ago. There are certain plants that never survive a winter in my garden such as achillias, and yet penstemons are quite happy?

I used to have a Patty's plum opium poppy which was the correct shade of greyish plum, but it actually was very difficult colour to get anything to go with it, and the flowers were very short lasting and vulnerable to the wet, I wasn't sad when it also failed to reappear one year...