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 unmistakeable, 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. 28
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.29 Only the Japanese - our fellow crowded-small-island-dwellers - can be said to make a comparable effort, and it is perhaps no coincidence that the more trendy, design-conscious English gardeners are often influenced by Japanese styles (witness the current fashion for wooden decking, pebbles 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, over 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 lawn-mowers 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 very poor, deprived, disabled or depressed and has more serious problems 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.30
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 socioeconomic 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 box hedges, old-fashioned shrub roses, herbaceous borders, clematis, laburnum, Tudor-revival/Arts-and-Crafts patterns and York stone paths aesthetically pleasing.