1 post tagged “elitism”
Oh, it's there alright. While I thought that formal rose gardeners might look down their noses at folks with vegetable gardens in their front yards, I was surprised how much division there is in the gardening world. Admittedly, I'm drawing this conclusion based on only a few sources - Garden Rant, the Annie's Annuals catalog copy, SF Chron garden articles, You Grow Girl - but there's a lot of individual opinion that starts to come off ex cathedra. There's one post in particular on Garden Rant that I recall that decried "common" plants that were seen too often for the blogger's taste.
Now, it's not that I don't have plants I can't stand. I do. My mother grew scarlet geraniums and asparagus fern on the front porch of our childhood home. For reasons I can't entirely articulate, I hate those plants. The geraniums stank (to my tender nostrils, anyway) and looked scraggly. The asparagus ferns had so little grace and the scarlet berries seemed incongruous. But my mom liked them. And so did neighborhood ladies who would sneak onto our property to take cuttings. I hated those geraniums so much that it was only recently I discovered that there were geraniums I considered pretty. That they didn't all look like that.
Anyway, I'm of the opinion that gardening should be encouraged. Yes, we can get annoyed and alarmed at folks who dump chemical fertilizers on their lawn and use noxious pesticides, but education can help with that. Still, wouldn't you rather see a yard with drugstore petunias than see more asphalt or concrete? Lots of property owners in my neighborhood have paved over their front yards so they can have more parking space. In poor neighborhoods, bits of green that are cared for (and not just weeds in a vacant lot) are scarce. So let folks have their "common" plants. Let businesses rotate in their annual color of marigolds and pansies. Damned near any gardening is better than none.
p.s. I'm eating a spaghetti squash from my garden tonight (with parmesan and spaghetti sauce). I planted vegetables so I'd eat more veggies, but I still don't do it enough. So yay for me.
