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from Cathy (cathyvpreece@aol.com)

To die for

Common or garden

Caroline Roux

Saturday June 29, 2002

The Guardian

I thought I'd got the hang of gardens. You know, grass, plants, trees, pebbles, the odd bit of statuary. I know that hostas and bamboo were in last year, but this year look as tired as a re-run of Sex And The City, and that what we're into right now is that unkempt meadow look, which goes beautifully with a Chloé peasant top and a fringed bag. Even in the most inner city garden, your patch should have that delightfully rustic "it just happened that way" appearance, as though it is perfectly normal to see poppies thrusting through the (fashionably unshaven) ragged grasses of Kennington. But as in all matters of fashion, it is so easy to have one's confidence shaken.

Someone had clearly missed out the prefix "sub" from the Urban Gardens show, which I visited last month. The hall at London's Olympia was filled with the splish splash of hot-tub salesmen hard at work. A stand flourishing like untouched rainforest, with an abundance of perfect plants, turned out to be that of Fake Landscapes - the artificial plant company. Close by, a fresh tidy lawn (a little too closely cropped for my current tastes) turned out to have both the look and feel of raffia. Still, it's hard to fault NoMow: its polythene fibres give a perfect surface that will not graze the skin and - just imagine - it does not fade.

To say the show was far away from the fashionable urban garden is the understatement of the year. Here, instead, was a world where decking was painted an Yves Klein blue, furniture was more important than plants and even topiary had been superseded by a bastardisation that involves filling a metal frame with moss and letting it grow so the whole thing turns a vicious bright green. The only justification for which seems to be that it's nigh-on impossible to create a poisonous green roaring lion centrepiece in any other way.

If nothing else, this unseemly display did serve to put what could seem like the ludicrousness of meadow fashion in its place. Pass the poppy seed, please. At least it's real.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002

(posted 7944 days ago)

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