Several of the things I like to do with my boyfriend or alone in my spare time have some connection with plants and gardening. We like to work on our allottment gardens, we like to go to botanical gardens and greenhouses to admire the work of other garderners. We also like to visit other cities, maybe visit a local castle or two, each of which usually has a garden.

Increasingly I have become more aware of a deep canyon dviding the world of gardening.

On one side of the divide are the huge chains. This is where we go to buy sacks of fertilizer, soil, sand or whatever we need at a decent price. This is where we go to buy a replacement water hose if the old one was stolen. This is where we go to buy an extra battery for the lawn trimmer. The main global brands of tools, gloves, seeds and bulbs are represented in these stores. There is an abundance of plants. They are cheap, though at times one or many stands may have dried from lack of watering. You have to be careful planting them outdoors because they may be unused to direct sunlight. The staff is harried and disinterested. Asking about a particular plant is like asking a random passing stranger on the street for directions to the subway you may or may not get lucky. When we visit one of these stores we have to remember what we came for and not get caught up in how cheap things are.

The other type of place is usually tied to a botanical garden or castle. Nothing is made of plastic. There is stained wood, hand made wicker baskets, moss, wrought iron bird baths (rusty). Handmade earthenware pots only. There are only a couple of each plant, rare varieties and their names are written by hand on recycled paper. Each plant is very expensive. Asking the knowledeable staff, who are wearing flowery rubber boots and rustic striped aprons, a question is a different experience. You have to consider how to phrase the question for fear of offending them with your ignorance. The females who run these places, for they are mostly females, stomp around between the inspired customers, clanging their zink watercans. I imagine they are a bit angry that so few customers are buying the overpriced plants.

What is the divide between the two types of places? I think it is the self-image they are selling the customers. The surplus you pay for an item in the latter type of store carries with it a whiff of harmony, genuineness and old-worldliness. Only I don’t feel innocent, harmonious and old-worldly. The flowery boots and the rusty bird baths scream “English countryside! 18^th, 19^th century!” at me but I can tell that they are lying. I want to ask who made the wicker baskets. I want to ask who made the bird baths rusty. I want to ask precisely how making newly manufactured items rusty makes them more genuine.

The women who run these types of places, who have the antennae or the talent to open such a business are viewed as aesthetically talented. To me they have a lack of talent and weak nerves to boot.

Why are there no places that sell garden tools or plants that reflect what gardening really is like? Working in a real garden is not about wearing Holly Hobby clothes or having garden tools with a flower pattern on them. Neither is it indifference. Real garden work is brutal and gory. Your precious 21^st century innocence is shattered when you inadvertently spear a frog or lizard shifting the compost with a pitchfork. The frog will not survive. You must put it out of its misery. Look at the faces of people selling produce at a local gardener’s market. Can you see the seriousness in their faces? In a garden you will have to make decisions such as causing multiple earthworm casualties digging through a patch of soil or else abstain from sowing at all. Will the halved earthworms survive and grow out their missing ends? I do not know. They appear to suffer greatly. Gardening is about fighting your enemies to the end. With snails and caterpillars and deer there are no win-win situations. In a real garden you can love your plants as you love your family members. What a incredulous feeling when they reappear after their annual winter death once again like so many Osirises. How it hurts when the brainless deer chew off your tulip shoots. The beauty and harmony of gardening is not something that you can buy. The beauty will hit you like an explosion when you least expect it and leave you gasping. It hurts but it belongs to you. It is real, whatever that means.