Shirley Lanigan discovers that her ideas have changed about certain matters of taste.
It is remarkable how tastes change. But what is it that determines those changes? For no fathomable reason, sights we once thought unremarkable, even ugly, one day appear gorgeous. Driving about over the past month or two, I have been struck by how much I have come to love shaped evergreen shrubs and conifers. Once upon a time I would have sworn that the ninth circle of hell must be decorated by conifers and evergreen shrubs. A sneer seemed the appropriate response to tame gardens of picea and thuja clipped into silly shapes. There was nothing to say about a drum-shaped yellow-speckled Aucuba japonica that would not need to be censored, and as for ‘mushrooms' of Lonicera nitida sitting in the middle of a lawn - the less said the better.
But something has changed. This gardening style has unaccountably become attractive. The car is slowed down as it passes roadside gardens filled with multi-shaped, multi-coloured evergreens. I cannot get enough of them and look forward to passing particular favourites on different cross-country journeys. Hunting them is good sport. The style is popular among rural gardeners so there are significant numbers of these gardens about.
But it is amazing what an enthusiastic soul, let loose with hedge-shears, can serve up in the shape of a smorgasbord of evergreen shrubs.
Some are smart and formal, marrying a few good-looking specimens together. Picture a run of neat, ruler-straight hedging of griselinia punctuated on either end by big domes of yew, taller and deeper than the book-ended hedge. Some are like a miniature Giant's Causeway, the steps in this case being made from an array of different shrubs.
The conifers and evergreens associated with tidy, low maintenance, no-fuss styles of gardening are generally let run riot. But it is amazing what an enthusiastic soul, let loose with hedge-shears, can serve up in the shape of a smorgasbord of evergreen shrubs. Hebe and holly, escallonia, box and pittosporum, juniper and cypress are all fare to be moulded and tweaked into tall slim columns; short, fat, squat pin cushions; pointed cones and pyramids and, of course, huge ‘eggs' and ovals. The labour-intensive lines of monumental oval shapes are particularly fascinating. They might be hewn from green- or gold-foliaged plants, or a mix of the two.
In any case, strong dislike has been replaced by warm affection, and for no reason I can put a finger on. It might be the whimsical design of most examples, or thoughts of the hours of work put in with the hedge-trimmer getting those ‘eggs' just so. It might be the unpretentious, unselfconscious joy of such plantings. Whatever it is, I am smitten!