Twenty years ago, I created a town garden for a busy psychiatrist. It was a small garden and I concentrated on screening her from neighbours and creating a sense of seclusion and escape. She later told me that each evening, after a day listening to patients’ problems, she opened her front door, dropped her bag and, keeping her coat on, walked straight into the back garden. There, she would inhale deeply the scents on the evening air, and her tension would drain away. This tiny, town garden had a positive impact on her wellbeing far beyond just something pretty to look at.
I have since watched people’s enjoyment of their gardens increasing, along with their discovery of the benefits of landscape. Interest in gardening has been growing gradually since the 1970s, but has really accelerated in the last 15 years. Previously, growing was mostly a hobby for older people with gardens of their own, but it is fast becoming an interest for younger urbanites, even those with little or no outside space.
The lockdowns of the Covid pandemic, when we were confined to our homes, have had a striking effect on British gardening habits. Gardening or exercising in public parks were two of the few things that we were allowed to do, a way to alleviate boredom at or close to home. Health, of course was very much on people’s minds: the question of how to build up physical and mental resilience. The positive effects of gardening were experienced in person, as we started to dig, weed, hoe and plant. One afternoon of vigorous digging results in a good night’s sleep. Very soon, one may feel energised and de-stressed. As well as the visible results and sense of achievement of a job well done, there are quick, tangible benefits for both body and mind. Some even find they lose weight too.
This renewed interest has been fuelled by media coverage: “how to” programmes and articles instructing people in growing their own food, greening up their balconies and encouraging them to chat with their houseplants. Where the media goes, advertisers soon follow, and purveyors of garden sundries have moved to exploit the lockdown upsurge in interest. The array of tools, furniture, games, lighting, heaters and ornaments available to buy is dizzying. Garden furniture manufacturers reported a surge in sales, astroturf producers say interest has sky-rocketed, while many have even turned their gardens into gyms. In the garden centres, plants are increasingly pushed aside for ever more displays of garden paraphernalia.
And here lies a dilemma with gardens. What do we want them for? Since the 1960s when John Brookes wrote his seminal book Room Outside, we have viewed our gardens as part of our living space, an extension of our homes. I have no quarrel with that, but I do think we need be careful not to make gardens the same as our interiors. What can, at its simplest, be popping a few seeds into the earth for the pleasure of watching them grow, can also become part of a complex cycle of fashion, consumption and waste. You could be fooled into thinking that you need to spend hundreds of pounds before you can enjoy your garden.
But that’s not so. Each garden space is unique: the way the light changes as the sun moves; the play of shadows on the walls; the movement of air through the trees and the very composition of the soil. Our choice becomes whether to work with the site and “read” its character or to impose a generic “inside-outside look”. I think we lose something in the latter approach; I see the garden as a bridge to the wider landscape. As people become more interested in their gardens, tuning into its rhythms, observing the wildlife and gaining confidence with its plants, they start to look beyond its fence.
This rediscovery of the benefits of gardens may be one of the few good things to come out of the pandemic. I hope we are able to hold on to this gain, in our personal lives and in the public realm. However, a danger exists that health benefits will be felt mostly by those who have private gardens, thereby exacerbating existing inequalities. (One in eight households do not have a garden, according to the Office for National Statistics). There is good evidence that one relatively easy and inexpensive way of decreasing health inequalities in an area is to ensure good quality public green space, accessible to everyone. I see this as an opportunity to be seized with both hands. Beautiful green spaces, healthier, happier citizens, and a more productive workforce – what’s not to like?
Juliet Sargeant is a garden designer, and winner of the gold medal and People’s Choice award at the 2016 RHS Chelsea flower show
