I’m a gardening expert – Homeowners are being brainwashed by new trend…it’s nonsense
GARDENING experts say homeowners are being brainwashed by a new trend.
Alan Titchmarsh and Monty Don have slammed an increase in wild gardens, describing them as "puritanical nonsense" and insist Brits should not be made to feel "guilty" for gardening for pleasure".
The leading horticulturists also say gardeners should not let their gardens run wild, instead urging people to relish "beautifying our little bit of earth to feed us, body and soul".
Don, 67, said "trendy" rewilding must not be viewed as "worthier" or more "moral" than a traditional garden.
He maintains, although the result of simply letting plants grow unfettered may be "beautiful and richly satisfying", it is no longer a garden.
Titchmarsh, 74, also spoke of how his well-pruned garden attracts a vast array of wildlife, as opposed to walking through "chest-high brambles".
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Writing in BBC Gardeners' World Magazine, Don added: "The deliberate and skilful evidence of human handiwork is the opposite of trendy 'rewilding' and completely, triumphantly beautiful.
"The truth is that however skilfully you plant and adapt your garden to work with your soil, position and climate, it can never truly be natural. Any garden is always a construct.
"It uses the given prevailing conditions to shape and alter them to make something that was not there before and could never be naturally created. I sense a degree of guilt about this at the moment.
"It is as though a so-called 'wild' garden that mimics natural conditions is somehow worthier and more moral than one in which mankind's creative skills are more obviously played out.
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"This is puritanical nonsense. If you want a truly wild garden then simply walk away.
"Leave any patch of ground completely untouched by human hand and it will happily become whatever it wants to be.
"The result might be beautiful and richly satisfying as well as very good for wildlife of all kinds, but it will not be a garden."
The veteran horticulturalist continued: "Really good gardening integrates and incorporates as much of the natural world as is possible."
His comments come as wild gardens have been subject to controversy after the Royal Horticultural Society's Chelsea Flower Show handed Lulu Urquhart and Adam Hunt's "A Rewilding Britain Landscape" top spot in last year's competition.
Writing in the same magazine, Titchmarsh said: "Gardening is about growing things, sowing seeds, taking cuttings and beautifying our little bit of earth to feed us body and soul.
"It is there to improve our lives and our outlook, at the same tie as being hospitable to birds, bees and other forms of life.
"And yet, if you have been brainwashed by current trends you would assume that the garden is theirs alone, and the less we interfere the better.
"I will have none of this - I will not leave it to become a natural haven for native plants because I know that in reality it will support a dwindling range of plant and wildlife species."
He added: "My garden looks beautiful because I tend to it responsibly and sustainably and all the bees and butterflies, woodpeckers and warblers, mice and shrews, creepy-crawlies, frogs, toads, newts and dragon flies that come in to share it don't seem to mind that I enjoy it too, far more than any of us would enjoy the patch of chest-high brambles that it would become were I to let it go."
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Last month Alan Titchmarsh ripped into The Chelsea Flower show for 'shooting itself in the foot' by putting pressure on gardeners to "pander to to current trends".
And Monty was recently forced to warn Gardener's World fans to stay away from his garden.
