How Hard Can It Be_ - Jeremy Clarkson [90]
I’m sure it’s possible to untangle a rose from a tree but it’s even more difficult and time-consuming than untangling the cable for your iPod. It’s more bloody as well. And anyway, once you embark on a project such as this, there is no end. Next thing you know, you’ll be in a greenhouse, making potions with a pestle and mortar, and not sleeping at night because of greenfly. Nobody ever loses sleep over their decking.
The worst thing about gardening, though, is the pruning. We’re told that for a plant to become strong and tall so it may hide the block of flats your neighbour built on his vegetable patch, you must cut it back every year. You only have to look at the Brazilian rainforest to know this is rubbish.
Here we have an area the size of Wales, or is it the Albert Hall? Either way, it’s the most beautiful garden in the world. And every time someone comes along to prune it a bit, so they may grow some cows, nature lovers get all cross.
Gardening is like doing a jigsaw. A pointless way of passing the time until you die. Pruning is like putting the completed picture back in the box so that you can start again. And the net effect is that the tree you planted to shield the neighbours’ new skyscraper is now only 2 in tall and looks stupid.
But I haven’t finished yet. About twelve years ago a friend and I both planted yew hedges. Mine has been pruned vigorously every year and is now about 6 ft tall and extremely boring. Hers was never pruned and, consequently, is a mass of topiary giraffes and farmyard animals. The only thing I could sculpt mine into is a mouse.
Let’s just say you do like a garden, that you don’t mind dragging your lawnmower through the house every weekend, and that you like digging. Fine. But because you are an amateur and your garden is likely to be fairly small, and because you are British and you therefore think pansies are pretty, you will end up with something that looks like a sponsored roundabout in Milton Keynes.
There are some great gardens in this country. But yours isn’t one of them. Yours looks like it was planted and maintained by Ardman’s Double Glazing. And it’s not somewhere you can ever sit and relax, because every time you try, you will notice a bit of moss that needs removing or a beetle that needs spraying or a flower that needs deadheading. So you’ll be up and down like a pair of whore’s drawers, until one day, while doing a bit of hedge trimming, you will cut through the cord and be killed. Or you will have a heart attack. You will not be there when your grandchildren get married. And you would have been if only you’d sold the damn garden to Bryant Homes and spent the money on a decent holiday every year instead.
Sunday 19 July 2009
The conquerors are coming, Pierre – we Brits need more land
Last week, we heard about two neighbours fighting over a bit of lawn with a bush on it. And, at a cost of God knows how much, the case has ended up in the High Court in London. A court case. Over a shrub. It beggars belief.
Except it doesn’t any more. A friend told me yesterday about the dispute she’s having. ‘The deeds to my house say people can drive cattle down the lane past my house but now my neighbour’s son has passed his driving test and he’s driving his car down there. So I’ve rebuilt the wall, which means his car won’t fit any more. Ha.’
Then we have Griff Rhys Jones, who, last Wednesday, urged the nation’s canoeists – all four of them, I should imagine – to ‘disturb as many anglers as possible’. He claims that many stretches of river have been bought by private fishing clubs and are therefore out of bounds to exponents of the eskimo roll.
I’m not immune either. All week, my wife has been at a public inquiry, started because some militant dog walkers in the Isle of Man wish to ramble through my kitchen and take YouTube footage of me on