{"id":2481,"date":"2010-04-28T05:47:19","date_gmt":"2010-04-28T05:47:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/?p=2481"},"modified":"2010-04-28T05:47:19","modified_gmt":"2010-04-28T05:47:19","slug":"bad-garden-design-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/bad-garden-design-america\/","title":{"rendered":"Bad garden design in America"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-2485\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/2010\/04\/28\/bad-garden-design-america\/bad-garden-design-11\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-2485\" title=\"bad-garden-design-11\" src=\"http:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/09\/bad-garden-design-11.jpg\" alt=\"bad-garden-design-11\" width=\"775\" height=\"715\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/09\/bad-garden-design-11.jpg 775w, https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/09\/bad-garden-design-11-300x277.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/09\/bad-garden-design-11-768x709.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/09\/bad-garden-design-11-624x576.jpg 624w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 775px) 100vw, 775px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/biography\/james_van_sweden\">James van Sweden<\/a> told Monty Don that &#8216;Americans just don&#8217;t get gardening. Americans don&#8217;t go outside. They are frightened of it. Frightened of bugs and wildlife. Frightened of the heat and the cold. They don&#8217;t want the work of a garden. Maintenance companies come in and cut and fertilise the grass. That&#8217;s it.&#8217; (<em>Around the world in 80 gardens<\/em>, 2008 p.244) He sounds like a grumpy old man, and seems to have forgotten about California and the Pacific North West, but there are some significant points to be made about gardening in the United States:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>when it is not too hot and too humid to work in a garden, it is often far too cold<\/li>\n<li>though called &#8216;yards&#8217; much of of the green space around houses is not fenced or otherwise enclosed, partly because a fence would be considered an unfriendly gesture<\/li>\n<li>American&#8217;s move house more often than Europeans &#8211; and pay a higher percentage of the house price to the realtor (leaving less money for the garden)<\/li>\n<li>American houses are larger than European houses &#8211; so why go out when indoors is so comfortable?<\/li>\n<li>Americans have shorter vacations and tend to work longer hours<\/li>\n<li>Food is cheaper in the US<\/li>\n<li>the American landscape architecture profession continues to regard garden design as an inferior activity<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Please correct me if I am wrong &#8211; or add other explanations. I am not saying bad garden design is an exclusively US phenomenon, but they do seem rather good at it! The above illustation is from our <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/ebooks\">eBook The Principles of Garden Design<\/a>. We are of course aware that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/gardens\/in\/usa\">America has many great public gardens to visit and has long enjoyed a leadership role in world landscape architecture.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>James van Sweden told Monty Don that &#8216;Americans just don&#8217;t get gardening. Americans don&#8217;t go outside. They are frightened of it. Frightened of bugs and wildlife. Frightened of the heat and the cold. They don&#8217;t want the work of a garden. Maintenance companies come in and cut and fertilise the grass. That&#8217;s it.&#8217; (Around the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2481"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2481\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}