On to Cape Wrath (3)
Daffodilia Is Everywhere
A garden and a landscape are different things, obviously. A city garden is an enclave, an artificial miniature habitat where plants meet that never meet in nature. But outside the city gardens are often open to the landscape, or part of it.
One might hope that people who choose to buy a house in a spectacular setting – Scottish highlands, Dutch polders, wherever – have an eye for it. That looking out of their windows they enjoy the hills or moors or pastures, and shape their place in harmony with its surroundings.
But often this is not the case. It is above all the commercially averaged aesthetics of the garden centre that dictates garden design, a standardised vision of what a garden ought to be. Situated in the landscape, such a garden often looks like a petty act of protest.
And in spring it is the daffodil that dominates the scene.
As a product of nature it is beyond criticism. But in its garden varieties it has lost whatever charm it may originally have had (like the tulip and so many other flowers). The garden daffo is a crudely coloured bugle that waddles spastically on an overlong stalk (“fluttering and dancing”, in Wordsworth’s flattering description). Mute fanfares in a show of shameless self-celebration.
Given the bloated reputation and popularity of this flower, it might be interesting to organize a Worst of Narcissist Excesses photo contest. There were some precious places on the trail that I failed to shoot (much better than the modest patch pictured here). I still hesitate to collect the characteristically ugly and unlikable.
The winning contribution might as well be Dutch, for this nation has not only a strong tradition of growing and exporting the daffodil bulb, but its obsession with planting it all over the waysides may exceed even that of the Brits.