Grass
Posted By Judith on 6th June 2017
When you come to think about it ‘grass’ is everywhere. Gardens, parks, traffic roundabouts, church yards, sports fields, roadside verges, in fact it’s hard to go anywhere that doesn’t have close proximity to ‘grass’ of some kind.
In recent years there has been an increase in the use of ornamental grasses in gardens and the top garden designers use them enthusiastically, but here’s the thing, I just don’t get it.
A couple of weeks ago I was watching an episode of ‘Gardeners World’ and Monty Don was splitting and moving various large clumps of named grasses. When he’d finished he stood back and said how great they looked in their new positions.
Well I’m sorry, but if I had a flower bed that looked like that I wouldn’t be showing it off to the nation on TV I’d be reaching for my weeding trowel with the utmost urgency.
It’s hard to believe that all the so called ‘experts’ are wrong, but it does rather remind me of that Danny Kaye song from my childhood ‘The Kings New Clothes’, readers of a certain age will know what I mean.
Does this make me a horticultural heathen a fescue Philistine? Perhaps it does, but there we are.
Don’t get me wrong grass in the right place is a joy. Who can’t appreciate the beauty of a well kept lawn,
(OK I admit ours still needs some work) or the precision of a bowling green or putting surface on a golf course, but large untidy tussocks in a flower border are not for me.
Having said that I’m not into mowing stripes into the lawn like some perfectionists, though I have to admit to rather liking a recent trend by large football clubs to mow interesting patterns into their playing surfaces.
Leicester City are particularly good at it as you can see here.
Grass; ubiquitous, versatile and useful in the right place but for me it doesn’t belong in a flower bed.
And finally – – – yesterday I heard a politician on TV saying that Britain was getting up off it’s knees following the recent terrorist attacks in Manchester and London.
Shame on you! Britain is not on it’s knees, nor is it ‘reeling’ as some American papers have reported. We are sad, we are grieving but we are not cowed. It will take more than mindless thugs of any stripe to break us.
