The house across the road has just been completed and is almost ready for hand over to the owners. Which is exciting because we’ll soon have new neighbours to meet and a new garden to gaze upon -and pick to bits if we don’t like it! It’s actually quite interesting to ponder their garden and what design it will take on but if it’s anything like the ones in the rest of the street – it won’t be slow. A few weeks from now, depending on the current supply, roll-on turf will cover at least 3/4’s of the front yard with some kerbing to define the border beds.
In the beds will go an assortment of flax, cordylines and other non-descript trendy perennial shrubs. Any tree left on the property will be removed – because we all know that trees are messy and nobody wants to spend time raking leaves. In their place, fashionable evergreens – primarily non-indigenous species – will be planted and there won’t be a vegetable or fruit producing plant to be seen.
Whatever happened to slow gardens? You know the ones, they take 5 – 10 years to even come close to maturing. The garden is designed upon trial and error and many weekends, holidays and summer afternoons are spent tweaking and enjoying it. They’re a little rough and ready and certainly not a tight package completed in 2-3 months.
I can see a call going out, much like the slow food movement, rallying gardeners together to breathe life back into our suburban backyards. It’s happening already, in some ways, through Susan’s encouragement of Garden Coaching. As this trend progresses I’m sure we will see people ditch the 1-minute garden in exchange for something a little more REAL and dynamic.
And, I guess, this is the answer to the McDonald’s Mentality – to encourage and empower people to see gardening as a journey rather than the destination.
Hopefully our new neighbours are interested in gardening and will want some help to create it – SLOWLY.