Customers are still shopping, despite the drought. It felt quiet, but we keep putting plants out for sale and there are spaces to put them in, so they must be selling (either that or the boss needs to keep an eye out for plant rustlers). The tally on the tills at the end of the day was quite respectable. It was quiet enough, though, that I had time to think while putting plants out for sale.
I was given the mandate to titivate some of the display tables, and had a little Burle Marx moment with blocks of colour, a swirl of lime-green santolina and a chunk of a dark purple form of Geranium pratense. I enjoy that sort of planting in public gardens, without feeling the desire to do it at home, which set me thinking, after yesterday's outing, about the difference between public and private gardens. I was chatting recently to somebody who didn't like the walled garden at Marks Hall. She found it too impersonal, and liked gardens that felt as though they were loved. She was also not keen on modernism, and liked shaggy gardens, which is fair enough, as it is a matter of personal taste. I like both, and find it's the drearily tidy that get me down. I did once go on a tour that had a major designed garden, as featured in garden magazines, as the main feature, and the private garden of a botanical illustrator as the filler, and found to my surprise that I preferred the latter. I did respond to the emotional warmth of the loved private garden, but I also found the famous design heavy and ponderous, seen in the flesh.
I think gardens that are designed as public spaces should be judged on their own merits, and not on how closely they approximate to a private garden. They have to meet different needs and cope with different pressures, for a start. On the last two occassions that I've been to Anglesey Abbey, designed as a (large) private family garden and now owned by the National Trust, significant bits of the garden were closed because they could not cope with the pressure of visitors' feet. The first time we went was in autumn, and we discovered, to our irritation and after the NT had charged us 50p at the entrance for a photocopied plan of the dahlia planting, that the lawn between the dahlia beds was roped off, and we could only view them from the ends. The second time we went was in snowdrop time, and every grass path and lawn was shut, so we had access to about one quarter of the site. The National Trust says that they are keeping the layout as designed by Lord Fairhaven, but the trouble is the original design can only cope with a fraction of the visitors that will fit into the car park and cafe.
I would not want crisp designed rows of iris alternating with neatly clipped rows of box at home, much as I enjoy looking at them at Marks Hall, because they would be boring to maintain. It would feel like outdoor housework. This is one of the other differences between the grand and the domestic garden. The grand garden is maintained by paid staff. The garden is the output. The owner of the garden is making a statement 'Look, I am so busy and important I don't do these things myself, and so wealthy I can afford to pay other people to do them for me'. The domestic garden, tended at least in large part by the devoted owner, is a process as much as a thing. When I am in my garden, weeding and planting and clipping and tying up, and looking at toads and birds and beetles, the point is being in the garden as much as having a garden. Monty Don said in his Italian garden series that one of the differences between English and Italian gardens was that in Italy a fine garden was something successful people might have, but they paid other lowly people to look after it. Owners participating in the manual work was a peculiarly English phenomenon.
That was about as far as my musings got, before work intervened. At five o'clock I stopped designing display tables and started watering again. Now, as soon as I have done my back exercises, I shall start watering here, and continue, probably, until it gets dark.
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