It is said that the road to hell is ‘paved with good intentions’. Well, so is the typical front garden in what used to be our green residential streets. In the last ten years, 13 per cent of the lush greenery in British front gardens has disappeared; 4.5 million of our front gardens are now entirely paved over. We used to laugh at overgrown front gardens populated with bearded garden gnomes; but those are surely preferable to grey rectangular deserts of nothingness, mere off-street parking spaces for the car. An exemplary front garden has been created for this week’s Chelsea Flower Show, demonstrating how parked cars and plants can and should live together in harmony.
Here are some of the most horrible types of front garden we encounter on our daily walks, each one bringing a stab of sadness.
Withered Ambition
This type of garden was certainly ‘paved with good intentions’. The owner’s vision was to have a lovely low-maintenance paved front garden with three tall pots, each containing a clipped box-tree ball. The only thing is, she couldn’t be bothered to clip them, or to water them. So they died. Now they are three misshapen brown box-ball corpses. ‘I found that I simply haven’t got green fingers,’ the owner says to her friends. ‘I just have to touch a plant and it dies.’ These front gardens often have a second sign of withered ambition: a bike padlocked to the railings, with two flat tyres.
The Failed Truth-Seeker
There are signs that this type of garden was once a Zen rock-garden. In the middle there’s a gnarled old bonsai tree, and round it is a circle of coarse grey gravel. But there’s a dirty old Tesco carrier bag hanging from one of the bonsai branches, and the gravel is full of weeds and cigarette butts. This householder gave up his Zen yearnings long ago and is now addicted to possessions.
The Agoraphobic
She hides in the basement and hardly ever goes out, and her house is darkened at the front by an enormous fir tree planted in 1888. Round it grows a great dark-green ivy bush which clings to the blackened windows that haven’t been cleaned for decades.
The Hygienic Housewife
This person does remember to water and clip her box balls, and her standard bay tree, both of which are kept in black pots. But that’s it: no other greenery is permitted in this spotless front garden. Soil is filthy stuff and contains worms. Not to be permitted. Even the dustbins must not be seen; special outdoor cupboards have been built for them. The Volvo can just fit onto the hard-standing. So when she looks out of her basement window all she can see are the two large Volvo headlight ‘eyes’ staring in at her like cattle. There’s a printed sign on the letter-box: ‘No junk mail.’
The Overweight Students
This is rented accommodation so no one cares about the front garden: it is a wasteland of lidless dustbins with the house number painted on them in white paint, and of overfilled, semi-transparent bin-liners so you can see exactly what the inmates have had for supper all week: masses and masses of beer, a pizza delivery from Domino’s, and one effort at communal spag bol (requiring tinned tomatoes).
The Dead Old Lady
This is the ghost of a once charming front garden, with a pretty brick-edged rectangle of earth in which you can see the unpruned remnants of four rosemary plants. In the middle stands a small pilaster on which pansies used to be planted each spring. But the person who made this patch of beauty has been carried out in her coffin, and now ’tis an unweeded garden that grows to seed. Stinging nettles have appeared, and the usual sprinkling of discarded Starbucks cups. The place smells strongly of fox excrement.
The Ambitious Vicar
He won’t be in this job for long, and although he often preaches about stewardship, he doesn’t take much trouble to be the steward of his vicarage front garden. Why should he? The C of E pays so badly. There’s parking for five cars (he’s lucky), but the scraggy lawn is mostly dandelion clocks. The bench by the front door is an old Victorian church pew.
The Local Weirdo
The one who keeps racing pigeons. He has barricaded himself in by lining the front fence with strong pieces of plastic, and there’s a sign on his front window: pigeon racing is better than sex, and beware of dog. You avert your gaze, but if you do glimpse the front garden, it’s full of metal crates and bird-droppings.
The Absent Billionaire
The white metal grilles on the front windows are closed and locked. On the paved ground, there’s an oil slick on the patch where the car very rarely sits. This front garden is looked after by professionals who come in once a month. But the massive box-hedge in the self-watering planter at the front is in trouble: attacked by the two current epidemics of Asian caterpillars and box blight. It will all have to be ripped out.
Deluded Grandeur
This front garden has a winding path up to the front door, so the visitor thinks it’s longer than it is, and that this is some kind of driveway or even a drive. When you arrive at the front door, you see that the house has a name: ‘Chatsworth’.
First impressions count — as we know from entering restaurants or art galleries. Front gardens are often the only aspect of someone’s life that people see. ‘If their front garden looks like that,’ the passer-by will think, ‘I hate to think what their back garden looks like. Let alone their glove compartment and underwear drawer.’