Gardens

The Garden
November 1999

It sometimes seems that conifers have few allies, but although some have earned a bad name, says Martin Gardner, this should not deter us from planting the best

Do conifers fascinate and excite gardeners? Professional gardeners depend on conifers to give gardens structure and colour the year round, and through my work with the International Conifer Conservation Programme I have witnessed an increasing interest in using coniferous trees in public gardens and private estates.

It is perhaps the home gardener who has tired of conifers. As with so many aspects of present-day life - including gardening - fashions come and go. The conifer fashion, in the form of hedges, and dwarf and slow-growing selections, is perhaps not as popular as it was. In recent years this trend has been greatly influenced by the written media, horticultural shows and broadcasting. We must not forget that television has an enormous effect on the gardening public, influencing garden design and what plants are grown.

I confess, although I enjoy wild habitats dominated by elegant, coniferous trees, I find it hard to relate to their diminutive representatives in horticulture. These often bear no resemblance to the character of the wild plant, and growing Sequoia sempervirens 'Prostrata', the prostrate form of the tallest-known organism on earth, should be a capital offence.

In fact my worst nightmare is to wake up and find a panoramic view of the uniform, dark monoculture of commercial conifer plantations, a garden surrounded by an imposing hedge of Leyland cypress, and a planting of dwarf, ornamental conifers.