We are forever being told that gardening is good for us, that it improves our mental health, that it gets us close to nature and other wonderful things. And for some people I am sure that this is true. But for many of us gardening is just a chore.
I like to call it ‘outdoor housework’. I mean, just look at it rationally. You spend your time digging over the beds removing weeds, but they only come back. Just like vacuuming – the dirt just keeps coming back. It is repetitive, boring work that often leads to back pain.
I know that some people take pleasure in dusting and vacuuming and no doubt they also claim it is good for their mental health and that a tidy house is a sign of a tidy mind. I don’t have a tidy mind (and don’t want one). One of the pleasures of life is the random irrelevant miscellanea that jostle together – like this article.
The trouble with weeds
Have you ever dug up a dandelion? I have been digging them up on my partner’s allotment (it’s definitely hers, but I have to do some of the work on it). You dig down two feet and still haven’t reached the bottom of the root (which snaps off). You remove what you can, but next week that tiny bit of root has flourished, and there is another dandelion to dig up – and so repeat ad nauseum.
If you think dandelions are bad there are also brambles – long, extensive and very difficult to remove roots. We have one bramble growing up the middle of a blackcurrant bush, so without killing the blackcurrant you can’t get rid of it. Then there is bindweed where, if you leave an inch of root, it comes back a mile. Maybe the worst is couch grass which grows nearly as fast as you dig it up.
Food for thought
Next you plant slug food (I know, gardeners call them seedlings) – maybe that’s what is meant by getting close to nature. I simply don’t feel close to nature whilst involuntarily feeding slugs. They eat half the seedlings that a late frost, or too much rain, or too little rain haven’t killed. Then you have to hoe, hoe, hoe without Father Christmas to help. Eventually if you are lucky, you get a few potatoes with slug holes, cabbages half eaten by pigeons, and so many courgettes that you are sick of them and everyone else has too many at the same time.
With gardeners, there is more joy down at the allotment in one strawberry grown than in over 99 bought and covered in cream. Even though that one strawberry is half eaten by slugs and beginning to rot, and has lost all its flavour because of the rain.
Gardening is a constant battle
Have you ever noticed that gardeners are actually never happy? They are always complaining about it being too dry or too wet, that this or that crop has failed, that carrot fly has done for their crop. They worry about the weather, about the brassica-eating pigeons, the rabbits getting through the allotment fence, when is the right time to prune the fruit bushes, and even whether or not they should plant at the full moon (yes, that is real; I have been present at discussions of the influence of the moon on plant growth). And yet, they claim they love it and get great pleasure from it.
It can’t possibly be about saving money as they have to buy a shed, forks, spades, fertiliser, four different kinds of compost, seeds, netting, seedlings and a host of other expenses that almost certainly add up to more than the value of any produce.
Live and let grow
Let’s leave gardening to those that want to, and go to the shops and get vegetables that are not half eaten by slugs, that are not all ready the same week with nothing to eat for months. If you want to eat organic and seasonally, just don’t pretend that growing it yourself is any fun.
Quentin Crisp, the Naked Civil Servant, said: “There is no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years the dirt doesn’t get any worse.” I can only recommend the same approach to gardening. There is even a name for it now – rewilding. We can stop gardening and feel good about it. What is more it gets us closer to nature (or at least nature gets closer to us).
Put down your spade, give away your secateurs. Gardeners of the world unite: you have nothing to lose but your chains (rods, poles or perches).
