Trends, fashions and foolishness

The latest email newsletter from the very British Royal Horticulture Society includes a list of predictions of this year’s garden trends. They’re forecasting a surge in dwarf varieties of vegetables, which they call “tabletop veg.” They think that because of rising food prices, even people with very little space will want to grow food in every square inch. Because last year saw a “14% uplift in sales” of tomatoes, they predict this will be “the year of the tomato.”

Another new trend, “punctured water butts,” called for a Google search to look up “water butts.” They’re rain barrels. They can also be smaller water containers — punctured at the bottom so the water leaks out to moisten nearby plants.

Then came an article about artificial intelligence in the garden. An AI intrigue started with some ads for bulbs purported to grow weeping begonias, which don’t actually exist. The photographs of them were lovely, but on closer inspection some flowers seemed to be hanging from fish line.

Even so, the authors were enthusiastic about AI-driven irrigation systems that use “smart gardening technology that fuses AI and robotics in lawncare and irrigation.” There’s some fanciful thinking about drones doing the watering too.

Those of us who like to hold a garden hose and daydream as we water on a summer evening might say no thank you to that. We’d miss that quiet time, and those moments when a hummingbird comes to dance in the spray.

AI gardening sounds like outsourcing life itself. It’s a trend many of us will not embrace.

The good news is we don’t have to. In fact, we don’t have to adopt any of the trends, past, present or future, that someone assures us will make everything better.

The path to happiness in the garden is smoother when it’s not littered with the latest trends, or with lumps of “you should.” You should add Epsom salts, but I’ve forgotten why. You should till deeply, or you should never till at all. You should have raised beds ... or you should not squander wood that way because it will rot. You should use a particular pesticide because it was used hundreds of years ago by indigenous people, so it must be safe. You should not use that pesticide because now it’s believed to cause cancer.

You should plant according to the phases of the moon, and study companion planting so your plants will all get along with their neighbors. And you should slather yourself with sunscreen when it’s sunny, and take vitamin D because you’re not getting enough sunlight.

You should banish the word “should” from your gardening vocabulary, and appreciate the irony of this sentence.

In the garden, success and happiness come from believing what you see and experience, and being skeptical of everything else. Science is a pretty good guide too, but it’s always evolving, and there is always misleading junk science around ... and what Google delivers as AI is not reliably accurate. If you want reliability, watch the sun, the moon, and the tides.

If you want a successful garden, learn from experience — your own and the experience of people or nonprofits whose gardens you have volunteered in, asked questions about, and praised.

Manure is good too.