Why your garden reveals more about your personality than you think
It’s that time of year again. Across the country, the horticulturally inclined are putting on their straw hats, tying up their tweed ties, scrubbing up their nails. The Chelsea Flower Show, highlight of the gardening calendar and the beginning of the English summer season, opens next week.
While Chelsea might represent gardening at its grandest, as a nation our passion for plants crosses all boundaries of age, class and culture. We’re all at it, whether it’s cultivating a knot garden or simply snipping a bit of cress from a saucer.
So BBC Two’s announcement last week that they are filming a Britain in Bloom television programme, to air next year, has been greeted with glee in potting sheds up and down the land.
Cameras will follow the daily drama in various communities as they prepare for the arrival of the judges. Who needs Scandinoir? This has all of the sweaters and, very possibly, just as much blood; all of the bring-the-nation-together charm of Bake Off, plus secateurs.
Chelsea Flower Show 2017: which garden will win Best Show Garden?
Britain in Bloom was launched in 1964, after Roy Hay, a gardening journalist, visited France and was inspired to create our own festival by the floral displays he saw as part of their Fleurissement de France events.
But, it hasn’t been all fun and fuchsias since. The competition that launched a million hanging baskets has also exposed our darker side. Sabotage is not unknown and not everyone is a fan. Sir Roy Strong blamed Britain in Bloom for spreading, “flowers like a disease”.
But while many things might divide us as a nation, what we can say is that most of us are quite potty about plants. And just as with what we eat or drive, where we live or go on holiday, how we garden says a lot about us. In fact, a peek over the fence will even give you as firm an indication of how your neighbours might vote in the upcoming election …
A Whiff of the Shires
We see you, with all that flawless topiary. You love its confident, bold shapes, which require expertise and therefore cash (in hand, but what can you do?) to maintain. We know you like those espaliered fruit trees because they give a pleasingly strong and stable framework to the walled garden.
Your old roses, muted perennials and species plants also tell us that you know what you like and like what you know. But you’re not a stick-in-the mud: those boxing hares/pig/goat sculptures you bought on a shooting trip to Yorkshire show a bit of pizazz.
You pretend you like breakfast on the terrace in summer, but really you prefer the peace of the kitchen, a proper napkin and zero threat of wasps.
Latest buy: An auricula theatre. So charming.
Most likely to have: A pet cemetery; a dovecot; life-size bronze racehorse (our Derby winner, such a character); a floating duck island.
Proudest gardening achievement: Opening the garden for the National Garden Scheme every year. People come from miles for the coffee and walnut cake.
Absolutely anti: Gnomes. Oh. You have one? How charming.
Most likely to vote: Theresa
Conspicuously Consuming (organic veg)
You spend so much time at the allotment, your front garden at home is a bit of a mess but - as you explained to the neighbours - it’s great for the ecosystem and greenfly are people too.
Though you love your 28 varieties of kale and heirloom beetroot, if you fully costed it out it you know it would be cheaper to go to the corner shop.
After that trip to Cuba, you painted the back yard shriek pink and planted a palm tree, but secretly you know it looks dreary in that flat, North London light.
Proudest gardening achievement: That time you guerrilla planted 85 varieties of lettuce on a traffic island.
Most likely to have: A complex range of composting and fertilising options, including hot and cold bins (not afraid to wee on them if necessary) and wormeries. Some of your closest friends are nematodes.
Latest buy: Not massively into buying things. But you’re very proud of the planters you made from leftover wooden pallets. Hardly any splinters.
Absolutely anti: Would rather talk about what you’re for, not against. The MSM are always so negative.
Most likely to vote: Labour
Blowing in the Wind
You love wafting, hazy drifts of colour which blend almost amorphously into one another. To paraphrase Dolly Parton, whoever knew it would take so much work to look so, er, natural?
Inspired by a trip to the High Line in New York, you became obsessed with its designer, the great Dutch gardener Piet Oudolf – you believe we can learn much from our European gardening colleagues.
You would love some grand spirals of yew amongst the grasses and wildflowers, but plant size is limited by what you can get in your bicycle panniers.
Proudest gardening achievement: Creating a powerful coalition between the ‘new perennials’ prairie planting and the sedum roof of your new studio shed. You said you’d never sacrifice the lawn, but sometimes you have to make compromises for the greater good.
Most likely to have: Dried seed heads instead of Christmas decorations.
Latest buy: A little hydroponic kit, for an experiment. Personal use and all that.
Absolutely anti: Diesel-powered leaf blowers, #fakegrass
Most likely to vote: Lib Dem
Making Britain Bright Again
You were perturbed to discover Britain in Bloom was inspired by a French idea, but you draw comfort from knowing we’ve made it our own – no one can hold a candle to us Brits when it comes to putting on a good show. Keep calm and flower on and all that.
You love a conifer. You know where you are with a spruce. Plus with juniper you have the added bonus of that comforting whiff of gin.
You garden in a shirt and tie, and/or a proper apron, because: standards are very important to you.
Proudest gardening achievement: Creating a union flag from 2,000 (imported) begonias and lobelia.
Most likely to have: A diesel-powered leaf blower; fake grass.
Latest buy: An 8m flag pole. Absolutely ridiculous it needs planning permission. Ditto concreting over the front garden to make room for the Merc.
Absolutely anti: Non-native species. You want to get the gardening community on board with this and make a success of stronger British plants for British people.
Most likely to vote: Ukip.
