“A Rothschild once remarked that no garden, however humble,
should lack less than 2 ½ acres of rough woodland.”
This is the funniest thing in a stunningly ill-written
review of some book or other about gardens.
Its major virtue is that of being the first sentence.
Taking the opposite of ‘no garden’ to be ‘every garden’, and
of ‘lack’ to be ‘have’, the corollary of this statement is that every garden
should have less than 2 ½ acres of rough woodland. The reviewer is right in suggesting, later in
the review, that some gardens fail this rigorous test; but mine, I am proud to
say, is not one of them. Its acreage of
rough woodland is indeed considerably less than this stipulated maximum.
What would be interesting, and therefore not supplied by
either A. Rothschild or the reviewer, would be the required ratio between rough
woodland and other things, such as smooth woodland. Imagine, for example, that this might be one
unit of rough woodland to five of the other sorts of land, and that your tiny
garden measures 10ʹ
x 15ʹ. You are thus allowed 30 square feet, or 6ʹ x 5ʹ, of rough
woodland. Clearly the trees would have
to be bonsais; but what would make it rough?
I can only imagine an undergrowth of rather tatty aubrietia.
I've played hide and seek behind every tree of your woodland.
ReplyDeleteWhich comes over as a bit rude, innit. Not that it is.