Gardening and Peace of Mind – The Ultimate Contradiction

Don’t get me wrong. I love sitting in a garden, so long as someone else has created and nurtured this piece of heaven on earth.

No, the problem arises when, in order to have my own peace of heaven on earth, I actually have to create it and maintain it.

A garden is nature’s way of telling you that you can’t win; no matter how hard you try you are made constantly aware that given half a chance (or even a small fraction of that) nature will take over and turn your piece of heaven into a jungle of dandelions, ivy, long grass and assorted weeds and predatory shrubs: another kind of ‘heaven’ in fact – one for slugs, snails, moles, other people’s cats, and the odd travelling eco-beardy who wants to protect wasps.

I am pretty much in favour of wild flowers and grassy meadows with all kinds of furry creatures running about, but not necessarily in my garden.

I have three significant problems with a garden being defined as a place of peace and beauty.

The first is the disproportionality between the amount of investment (financial and physical) put in and the amount of returns I get.

The second is being surrounded by other people’s gardens which are infinitely more productive and beautiful.

The third is the amount of noise generated by 21^st century gardening. No doubt many of you who are as long in the tooth as I am will remember the somewhat agreeable click-click sound of a neighbour clipping a hedge; or the low-decibel whirring of a lawn mower being pushed. As for trimming a lawn edge, that was a virtually noiseless occupation with a pair of long-handled shears designed for the job.

Now hedges are clipped by petrol engine-driven hedge trimmers, and they are surely the spawn of the devil.

Lawns are mowed either with mowers driven by petrol engines that should have had their exhaust silencers replaced ten years ago, or by equally noise electric mowers connected to the power by a trailing cable that wraps itself around every available stone or twig it encounters before being chopped in half by its own machine and blowing the fuse box off the house wall. (Unfortunately, thanks to various safety devices, the operator of this high-decibel machine is spared electrocution).

Tidy lawn edges are the perfect excuse for making high-pitched wining noises reminiscent of your last visit to the dentist, by the use of the Blessed Strimmer.

With all this going, the chances of a peaceful interlude in your garden are fairly remote.

We are all guilty of making some of this noise, but I do try to keep it to a minimum. My mower is a battery-powered machine (by Bosch if you’re interested). It is efficient, and neighbours have commented on how quiet it is. I have a large total area of grass, and this machine easily does half of it in one battery charge; then whilst it is re-charging (30 minutes) I spend that time trimming the lawn edges – but not with a strimmer. I can do a perfectly good job, thanks very much, using the long-handled edging shears. When that’s done I reconnect the battery to the mower and complete the job.

I have about 30 yards of 5ft high hedging to trim, and much as I would like to do all of this with a pair shears I confess to resorting to a battery-powered electric hedge trimmer (Flymo if you’re still interested) – which is very quiet. One battery charge appears to go on forever, and I’ve never had to stop a hedge trimming job in mid-cut, so to speak. (Memo to self: I need a haircut).

If I have tree or shrub branches to cut, my first choice is not the Chain Saw! There are, however, many who have hours of noisy fun conducting their own version of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. No, I use a hand saw. That way, not only do I keep the peace, but I get much-needed exercise as well.

As the train of life that I’m riding in hurtles with increasing speed towards the inevitable buffers, I am more likely to want to resort to mechanical aids (if only to get up the bloody stairs after a day’s work within the conspiracy of nature against man that I call my garden). But I’m not sure why young, fit and healthy people should have to resort to them.

So there we have it – my rant on the peace of the garden, and if it stops raining I might just go out into my piece of peace to ponder on why my peonies produced buds that failed to open, why my laurel bush has turned black, and why my vegetables should be in the Guinness Book of Records under “Smallest in the World” category.