Xenophobia
Jenny Uglow wonders at British gardeners' contradictions - seeming to favour 'native species', but also having a voracious appetite for exotic foreign plants.
The writer and historian Jenny Uglow looks at the ways we have mapped 'Britishness' into garden design - even seeing political freedom expressed in the landscape gardens of the 18th century.
Perhaps none of our national characteristics are played out more obviously in the garden than xenophobia - our mixed and troubled responses to all things foreign. But excessive romantic nationalism associated with the land can take people in the wrong direction, underpinning intolerance and even fascism.
And gardeners' attitudes to 'invasive' foreign plants can be curiously representative of their views of society more generally!
We are not, says Jenny, in a separate moral universe when we are in the garden, it's as well to remember that!
Produced by Susan Marling
This is a Just Radio Ltd production for Radio 3.
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- Fri 4 Nov 201123:00BBC Radio 3
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