“Beauty & Biodiversity” at Borris House
Should gardening change and somehow; ‘return to nature’? At London’s big Chelsea Show there has been a new emphasis on sustainable gardening and the use of eco-friendly native ’plants’ and yet the award for the Best in Show went to a big exhibit which is unsustainable for British gardens and the very opposite of no-mow gardening. Robin Lane Fox explores the contradictions here and the way in which people, an invasive species, react to them, whether visitors to his garden or professors and students in the big Oxford college gardens he runs. His mission statement is beauty, biodiversity and a global haven, aims which are best served by the craft of gardening, not by double- think and hypocrisy about [re]wilding garden spaces and declaring war on every chemical and every hybrid plant.
