Thursday, March 11, 2010

This ain't the garden of Eden, there ain't no angels above

Perhaps there is a parallel universe in which the existence of the Ellerslie Flower Show -- and of a sub-culture of competitive gardeners who attend exhibitions of floricultural fashion -- makes some vestige of sense. I wouldn't want to live there, but it would nice to visit it. In this universe, the Flower Show brings in so much money that it's not actually held in Ellerslie (Auckland) any more, having been lured down to Christchurch by lucrative offers to the organisers.
Central to their award-winning garden was an enormous boulder, symbolic of Mother Earth fighting back.

The boulder had come crashing into the garden exploding through the fence and deck and sending an undulating wave, like that of an earthquake, through the garden landscape, said Ellis.

Their idea was to get visitors to stop and reflect on their own gardens, their choice of design, use of materials and how this impacted on the environment, the designers said.
Yes, you read that correctly. These plonkers are promoting the cause of low-impact, minimal-intervention gardening, by ummm uprooting umpteen tonnes of bloody great boulder, trucking it to the middle of Christchurch and landscaping several acres of disposable Readi-lawn around it, while the show judges applaud the audacity of their conceptual gesture.

Probably it's for the best that they're landscapers. If they were fashion designers, say, they'd be promoting the cause of cruelty-free clothing by skinning live minks on the cat-walk.

We are a doomed species, there is nothing we will not turn into an excuse for a competitive display of consumption, and we do not deserve to survive.

4 comments:

M. Bouffant said...

The boulder had come crashing into the garden exploding through the fence and deck and sending an undulating wave, like that of an earthquake, through the garden landscape, said Ellis.

Indiana Jones-style gardening? Or is there a Sisyphean element too? (We have no other "rock" jokes/references we'd like to make.)

We are a doomed species, there is nothing we will not turn into an excuse for a competitive display of consumption, and we do not deserve to survive.

At last! I am no longer a lone voice crying out in the wilderness, but a whimper among many.

Smut Clyde said...

Mr Bouffant is trying to engage me in a competitive display of "Who is most nihilistic" but I MUST RESIST.

All the press releases from the Flower Show were heavy on this idea that your next resource-heavy garden makeovers can turn your garden into an expression of your Green Values.

The whole thing is wrong on so many levels, it needs a basement and an underground carpark and a rooftop penthouse just to accommodate all the wrongness.

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

Probably it's for the best that they're landscapers. If they were fashion designers, say, they'd be promoting the cause of cruelty-free clothing by skinning live minks on the cat-walk.


What if they were Bush and Cheney, and they were all about long-term peace in the Middle East?
~

Big Bad Bald Bastard said...

I thought for sure that Mazirian the Magician would win this year.

The whole thing is wrong on so many levels, it needs a basement and an underground carpark and a rooftop penthouse just to accommodate all the wrongness.

Would it be safe to assume that most of the gardens incorporated invasive species?

I could go on- the whole phenomenon of the well-tended lawn drives me up a friggin' tree (at least a native one- a mighty tulip tree in my case).