Private Garden Visits Article: Comments

21 Jan '05 11:46 am

Ooh, Moosey, you are walking on quicksand there, as you say in your article,how easy it would be to offend a good gardening friend by a casual comment or observation on the state of their little patch of paradise.
However, having said that, you did manage to convey the spirit of both gardens in word and image. There are so many lovely,lovely private gardens out there which we would never see unless the owner(or owner's friend) chooses to share them with us. I much prefer to look at a garden made and cared for by what I term "an ordinary gardener" rather than those glossy, over designed and far too often photographed "famous" New Zealand places.You know the ones, they keep cropping up in the magazines, and tv shows over and over again.
(Speaking of tv shows, why do we never see any really good programmes any more, especially the English ones...?)
One other thing I want to have a wee moan about is the new fashion in some publications , of using lower case type for plant names... this is a personal bugbear of mine. I like names to stand out from the text... after all we pronounce them with capitals , as in "Westerland Rose", the emphasis is on the first letters of each word... or at least to my ears it sounds capitalized.
One article I was reading in my paper was discussing potatoe varities and I was seeing ilam hardy, desiree, rua...grrrr Mad

Am I being silly about this or is it a legimate gripe?

22 Jan '05 7:44 am

There is a scary rule that the observant self-trained gardener becomes horribly aware of (when trying to 'get it right') - that when a plant has absolutely all its names usually the - last bit? gets a small letter....

For example, purple things. Plantus Lovelius purpurea with a little p...

And my walking gardening friend with poor drainage? She is still speaking to me, but is complaining:
a) The heirloom tomato I gave her is refusing to set any fruit. In her words "It grows, it flowers, it grows, it flowers but not a sausage! ( or a tomato!)"
b) Her rose bed 'lake' has turned into a rose bed 'bake'.
And she wants a new photo taken, not wearing her droopy bra. Mature lady gardeners are so sensitive!