Watching the English

by Kate Fox

  However small, the green bit is at least as important as the box. Tiny scraps of land, which almost anywhere else in the world would be regarded as too insignificant to bother with, are treated as though they were grand country estates. Our moats and drawbridges may be imaginary, but every Englishman’s castle has its miniature ‘grounds’. Take a typical, undistinguished street in a typical suburban or ‘residential’ area, with the usual two rows of smallish, nondescript semi-detached or terraced houses – the kind of street in which the vast majority of English people live. Each house will usually have a minuscule patch of garden at the front, and a larger green bit at the back. In slightly more affluent areas, the patch at the front will be a little bigger, and the house set a few feet further back from the road. In less well-off areas, the front patch will shrink to a token tiny strip, although there may still be a front gate, a path to take you the one or two steps to the front door, and a plant or smidgen of greenery of some sort on either side of the path to prove that it still qualifies as a ‘front garden’. (The front garden with its path can also be seen as a kind of symbolic moat and drawbridge.)

  ‘Your Own Front Garden, You May Not Enjoy’

  In all typical streets of this kind, all of the little patches of garden, front and back, will have walls or fences around them. The wall around the front garden will be low, so that everyone can see into the garden, while the one enclosing the back garden will be high, so they can’t. The front garden is likely to be more carefully arranged, designed and tended than the back garden. This is not because the English spend more time enjoying their front gardens. Quite the opposite: the English spend no time at all in their front gardens, except the time necessary to weed, water, tend and keep them looking ‘nice’.

  This is one of the most important garden-rules: we never, ever sit in our front gardens. Even when there is plenty of room in a front garden for a garden seat of some sort, you will never see one. Not only would it be unthinkable to sit in your front garden, you will be considered odd if you even stand there for very long without squatting to pull up a weed or stooping to trim the hedge. If you are not squatting, stooping, bending or otherwise looking busy and industrious, you will be suspected of a peculiar and forbidden form of loitering.

  Front gardens, however pretty and pleasant they might be to relax in, are for display only; they are for others to enjoy and admire, not their owners. This rule always reminds me of the laws of tribal societies with complicated gift-exchange systems, in which people are not allowed to consume the fruits of their own labour: ‘Your own pigs, you may not eat.’ is the most famous and frequently quoted tribal example; the English equivalent would be ‘Your own front garden, you may not enjoy.’

  The Front-garden Social-availability Rule (and ‘Sponge’ Methodology)

  If you do spend time squatting, bending and pruning in your front garden, you may find that this is one of the very few occasions on which your neighbours will speak to you. A person busy in his or her front garden is regarded as socially ‘available’, and neighbours who would never dream of knocking on your front door may stop for a chat (almost invariably beginning with a comment on the weather or a polite remark about your garden). In fact, I know of many streets in which people who have an important matter to discuss with a neighbour (such as an application for planning permission), or a message to convey, will wait patiently – sometimes for days or weeks – until they spot the neighbour in question working in his front garden, rather than committing the ‘intrusion’ of actually ringing his doorbell.

  This social availability of front-gardeners proved very helpful during my research, as I could approach them with an innocuous request for directions, follow this with a weather-speak ice-breaker and a comment on their garden, and gradually get them talking about their gardening habits, their home improvements, their pets, their children and so on. Sometimes, I would pretend that I (or my mother or sister or cousin) was thinking of moving to the area, which gave me an excuse to ask more nosy questions about the neighbours, the local pubs, schools, shops, clubs, societies and events – and find out a lot about their unwritten social rules. In front-garden interviews, although I might sometimes focus on a specific current obsession, such as, say, the estate-agent question, I would often just soak up a whole lot of random data on a variety of subjects, and hope to make sense of it all at some later stage. This is not such a daft research method as it might sound – in fact, I think there may even be an official scientific name for it, but I can never remember the correct term, so I call it the ‘sponge’ method.

  The Counter-culture Garden-sofa Exception

  There is just one minority exception to the ‘Your own front garden, you may not enjoy’ principle, and as usual, it is one that proves the rule. The front gardens of left-over hippies, New Agers and various other ‘counter-culture’ types may sometimes boast an old, sagging sofa, on which the inhabitants will sit, self-consciously defying convention and actually enjoying their front garden (which, also in defiance of convention, will be unkempt and overgrown).

  This ‘exception’ to the no-sitting-in-front-gardens rule is clearly an act of deliberate disobedience: the seat is always a sofa, never a wooden bench or plastic chair or any other piece of furniture that might possibly be regarded as suitable for outdoor use. This flaccid, often damp and eventually rotting sofa is a statement, and one that tends to be found in conjunction with other statements, such as eating organic vegan food, smoking ganja, wearing the latest eco-warrior fashions, decorating the windows with anti-fracking posters . . . the themes and fashions vary, but you know what I mean: the usual counter-culture cluster.

  The garden-sofa sitters may be the subject of much tutting and puffing among their more conservative neighbours, but in accordance with the traditional English rules of moaning, the curtain-twitchers will usually just air their grievances to each other, rather than actually confronting the offenders. In fact, as long as the sofa-sitters abide by their own clearly defined set of counter-culture rules and conventions, and do not do anything original or startling – such as joining the local Women’s Institute or taking up golf – they will generally be tolerated, with that sort of grudging, apathetic forbearance for which the English seem to have a peculiar talent.

  The Back-garden Formula

  The back garden, the one we are all allowed to enjoy, is often relatively scruffy, or at least utterly bland, and only very rarely the pretty, colourful, cottagey profusion of roses, hollyhocks, pansies, trellises, little gates and whatnot that everyone thinks of as a typical English garden. It is verging on blasphemous to say this, but I have to point out that the truly typical English back garden is actually a fairly dull rectangle of grass, with some sort of paved ‘patio’ at one end and a shed of no particular aesthetic or architectural merit at the other, a path down one side and perhaps a bed of rather unimaginatively arranged shrubs and flowers along the other side.

  There are variations on this theme, of course. The path may run alongside the flower-bed, or down the middle of the grass rectangle, with flower-beds along both walls. There may be a tree or two. Or some bushes or pots, or maybe climbing-plants on the walls. The edges of the flower-beds may be curved rather than straight. But the basic pattern of the conventional English garden – the ‘high walls, paved bit, grass bit, path, flower bed, shed’ formula – is reassuringly unmistakable, instantly identifiable, comfortingly familiar. This pattern must be somehow imprinted on the English soul, as it is reproduced faithfully, with only minor twists and variations, behind almost every house in every street in the country.62

  Tourists are unlikely ever to see an ordinary, typical English back garden. These very private places are hidden from the street behind our houses, and even hidden from our neighbours by high walls, hedges or fences. They never feature in glossy picture-books about The English Garden, and are never mentioned in tourist brochures or indeed in any other publications about England, all of which invariably parrot the received wisdom that the
English are a nation of green-fingered creative geniuses. That is because the authors of these books do not do their research by spending time in ordinary people’s homes, or climbing onto roofs and walls at the back of standard suburban semis and peering through binoculars at the rows and rows of normal, undistinguished English gardens. (Now you know: that person you thought was a burglar or a peeping Tom was me.) Aesthetically, it must be said, the duped tourists, Anglophiles and garden enthusiasts who read this English Garden stuff are perhaps not missing much.

  But I am being unfair. The average English garden, however unoriginal and humdrum, is actually, on a mild sunny day, a rather pleasant place to sit and drink a cup of tea and chuck bits of bread about for the birds and grumble quietly about slugs, the weather forecast, the government and the neighbours’ cat. (The rules of garden-talk require that such moans be balanced by more cheerful noticing of how well the irises or columbines are doing this year.)

  And it must also be said that even the average, bog-standard English garden represents considerably more effort than most other nations typically invest in their green bits. The average American garden, for example, does not even deserve the name, and is rightly called a ‘yard’, and most ordinary European gardens are also just patches of turf.63 Only the Japanese – our fellow crowded-small-island-dwellers – can be said to make a comparable effort, and it is perhaps no coincidence that trendy, design-conscious English gardeners are often influenced by Japanese styles (witness the fashions for pebbles, raked sand and water-features). But these avant-gardeners are a tiny minority, and it seems to me that our reputation as a ‘nation of gardeners’ must derive from our obsession with our small patches of turf, our love of gardens, rather than any remarkable artistic flair in garden design.

  The NSPCG Rule

  Our ordinary back gardens may not be particularly beautiful, but almost all show evidence of interest, attention and effort. Gardening is probably the most popular hobby in the country – at the last count, at least two-thirds of the population were described as ‘active gardeners’. (Reading this, I couldn’t help wondering what ‘passive gardening’ might consist of – would being irritated by the noise of other people’s lawnmowers count, like passive smoking? – but the point is clear enough.)

  Almost all English houses have a garden of some sort, and almost all gardens are tended and cared for. Some are tended more carefully and expertly than others, but you rarely see a completely neglected garden. If you do, there is a reason for it: the house may be unoccupied, or rented by a group of students (who feel it is the landlord’s responsibility to do the garden); or occupied by someone for whom neglecting the garden constitutes some sort of ideological or lifestyle statement; or by someone who is poor, deprived, disabled or depressed and has more serious problems than weeds or untidy lawns to worry about.

  This last category may be grudgingly forgiven, but you can be sure that the others will be the subject of much muttering and tut-tutting among the neighbours. There is a sort of unofficial National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Gardens, for whose members the neglect of a garden is on a par with the mistreatment of animals or children.

  The NSPCG rule, perhaps as much as our genuine interest in gardening, may explain why we feel obliged to devote so much time and effort to our gardens.64

  Class Rules

  The garden historian Charles Quest-Ritson boldly rejects the rather pretentious current vogue for studying gardening as an art form and garden history as a branch of the history of art. Gardening, he says, ‘has little to do with the history of art or the development of aesthetic theories . . . It is all about social aspirations, lifestyles, money and class.’ I am inclined to agree with him, as my own research on the English and their gardens suggests that the design and content of an English person’s garden is largely determined – or at least very strongly influenced – by the fashions of the class to which he or she belongs, or to which he or she aspires.

  ‘Why,’ asks Quest-Ritson, ‘do hundreds of middle-class English women have a white garden and a potager and a collection of old-fashioned roses? Because these features are smart, or may have been smart about ten years ago – not because their owners think they are beautiful or useful, but because they make them feel good, better than the neighbours. Gardens are symbols of social and economic status.’ I would soften this slightly, and suggest that we may not be quite as conscious of the socio-economic determinants of our flower-beds as Quest-Ritson implies. We may genuinely think that our class-bound choices of plants and designs are beautiful – although this does not make them any less socially determined.

  Class Indicators and the Eccentricity Clause

  Our taste is influenced by what we see in the gardens of our friends, family and neighbours. In England, you grow up learning to find some flowers and arrangements of flowers ‘pretty’ or ‘tasteful’ and others ‘ugly’ or ‘vulgar’. By the time you have your own garden, you will, if you are from the higher social ranks, instinctively turn up your nose at gaudy bedding plants (such as zinnias, salvia, marigolds and petunias), ornate rockeries, pampas grass, hanging baskets, busy lizzies, chrysanthemums, gladioli, gnomes and goldfish ponds. You will, on the other hand, be likely to find other horticultural (haughtycultural?) features such as box hedges, old-fashioned shrub roses, herbaceous borders, clematis, laburnum, Tudor-revival/Arts-and-Crafts patterns and York stone paths aesthetically pleasing.

  Garden fashions change, and in any case it would be a mistake to be too precise and attempt to classify a garden socially on the basis of one or two flowers or features. The ‘eccentricity clause’ applies here as well, as Quest-Ritson observes: ‘Once a garden-owner has acquired a reputation as a general plantsman, it is quite permissible for him to express a tenderness for the unfashionable, the plebeian and the naff.’ I would say that being firmly and unequivocally established as a member of the upper- or upper-middle classes would be enough, with or without plantsmanship, but the point is much the same. The odd garden gnome or zinnia does not necessarily result in automatic demotion, but may be tolerated as a personal idiosyncrasy.

  To gauge the social class of a garden owner, it is therefore better to look at the general style of the garden, rather than becoming too obsessed with the class-semiotics of individual plants – particularly if you can’t tell an old-fashioned rose from a hybrid tea. As a rule-of-thumb, gardens lower down the social scale tend to be both more garish (their owners would say ‘colourful’ or ‘cheerful’) and more regimented in appearance (their owners would call them ‘neat’ or ‘tidy’) than those at the higher end.

  Higher-class gardens tend to look more casual, more natural, less effortful, with more faded or subtle colours. Like the ‘natural look’ in make-up, this effect may require a great deal of time and effort to achieve – perhaps more than the pastry-cut flowerbeds and disciplined rows of flowers of the lower-class garden – but the effort does not show; the impression is of a charming, uncontrived confusion, usually with little or no earth visible between the plants. Excessive fretting and fussing about the odd weed or two and over-zealous manicuring of lawns are regarded, by the upper classes and upper-middles, as rather lower class.

  The wealthier uppers, of course, have lower-class gardeners to do their fretting and manicuring for them, so their gardens may sometimes look rather too neat – but if you talk to them, you will find that they often complain about the perfectionism of their gardeners (‘Fred’s a dreadful fusser – has a fit if a daisy dares to rear its ugly head on “his” lawn!’) in the same patronising way that some businessmen and professionals mock the tidiness of their super-efficient secretaries (‘Oh, I’m not allowed near the filing cabinet – I might mess up her precious colour-coding system!’).

  The Ironic-gnome Rule

  Leaving aside the proletarian neatness of paid gardeners, if you do spot an unexpectedly and unmistakably plebeian feature in a higher-class garden, it is worth asking the owner about it. The response will tell you much more
about the owner’s class than the feature itself. I once expressed mild surprise at the presence of a garden gnome in a very grand and tasteful garden (I said something intelligent like ‘Oh, a gnome’). The owner of the garden explained that the gnome was ‘ironic’. I asked him, with apologies for my ignorance, how one could tell that his garden gnome was supposed to be an ironic statement, as opposed to, you know, just a gnome. He rather sniffily replied that I had only to look at the rest of the garden for it to be obvious that the gnome was a tongue-in-cheek joke.

  But surely, I persisted, garden gnomes are always something of a joke, in any garden – I mean, no one actually takes them seriously or regards them as works of art. His response was rather rambling and confused (not to mention somewhat huffy), but the gist seemed to be that while the lower classes saw gnomes as intrinsically amusing, his gnome was amusing only because of its incongruous appearance in a ‘smart’ garden. In other words, council-house gnomes were a joke, but his gnome was a joke about council-house tastes, effectively a joke about class. A subtle but clearly very important distinction. Needless to say, I was not invited back.

  This man’s reaction to my questions clearly defined him as insecure-upper-middle, rather than upper class. In fact, his pointing out that the gnome I had noticed was ‘ironic’ had already demoted him by half a class from my original assessment. A genuine member of the upper classes would either have boldly admitted to a passion for garden gnomes (and eagerly pointed out other examples of the genre dotted about his otherwise effortlessly elegant garden) or said something like ‘Ah, yes, my gnome. I’m very fond of my gnome,’ and left me to draw my own conclusions. The upper classes do not care what a nosy anthropologist (or indeed anyone else) thinks of them, and in any case do not need ironic gnomes to emphasise their status.

  HOME RULES AND ENGLISHNESS

  Can the unwritten rules of English homes and gardens help to clarify, refine or expand our ‘grammar’ of Englishness? Have we found or confirmed any more candidates for ‘defining characteristic’ status? Given that our homes and gardens are two of our principal obsessions, it would be surprising if an analysis of their underlying rules did not yield some helpful insights into our national character.