Privet sorrow

It is said that the road to hell is ‘paved with good intentions’. Well, so is the typical front garden in what used to be our green residential streets. In the last ten years, 13 per cent of the lush greenery in British front gardens has disappeared; 4.5 million of our front gardens are now entirely paved over. We used to laugh at overgrown front gardens populated with bearded garden gnomes; but those are surely preferable to grey rectangular deserts of nothingness, mere off-street parking spaces for the car. An exemplary front garden has been created for this week’s Chelsea Flower Show, demonstrating how parked cars and plants can and should live together in harmony.

Here are some of the most horrible types of front garden we encounter on our daily walks, each one bringing a stab of sadness.

Withered Ambition

 
This type of garden was certainly ‘paved with good intentions’. The owner’s vision was to have a lovely low-maintenance paved front garden with three tall pots, each containing a clipped box-tree ball.