Agriculture Reference
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objective, save, perhaps, the achievement of timeless and 'disinterested' beauty as an
objective in itself (Harvey 1989, 66).
While Harvey's claim is made in relation to urban design, his comment holds
credence for the consideration of the typical garden makeover - they too were most
often conceived as gardens within wider urban spaces. The pursuit of a rigorous
and consistent garden design concept without any recourse to a wider communal
or social goal was therefore a characteristic of the makeover. In these ways, one
can see how the traditional 'way of life' with its recourse to shared, communal
codes, was discarded in favour of the design remit of the 'lifestyle' Chaney
(2001) describes. Design was often presented as a desirable end in itself and the
possibility of underlying meanings was disregarded in favour of immediate, surface
impressions. For example, as part of the back garden makeovers in Gardening
Neighbours for example, Ali Ward persuades older members of the terrace Terry
and Joan to wipe every trace of their old garden away in favour of allowing the
makeover team to produce a classical formal garden. By way of introduction to the
feature-segment, Ali Ward's voice over sets the scene: 'The central feature of Terry
and Joan's original garden at No. 4 was a raised bed full of Bizzie Lizzies'. Indeed
the design of their 'undesirable' garden, is precisely the working-class design trope
favoured by my grandparents in the late 1950s (see Figure 2.1). This was clearly a
loaded introduction for the viewer of taste; if these are the plants and structures these
gardeners choose, they need the tasteful features that a design concept provides.
The saddening aspect of this act of gardening benevolence is that these gardeners
clearly wanted to keep their home-made concrete raised bed of impatiens, because
it contained valued personal aesthetic meanings for them. 'It was beautiful before
you changed it all,' remarks Terry as the camera pans the crisp formality of the
newly installed box hedges and standard bay trees. The raised bed provided colour
and centrality that the new design, which Terry and Joan call 'interesting', fails to
provide. This instance is typical of the values of makeover aesthetics; there is an
almost clinical obsession with maintaining a coherent design (even if that theme is
one of post-modern eclecticism), at the expense of plants or objects invested with
value, memory or meaning. It is also an example of symbolic violence (Bourdieu
1990) par excellence. The programme encourages the removal of local working-
class aesthetics to make way for the imposition of a middle-class coherent design
concept. The message is clear: get rid of vulgar working-class aesthetic attachments
which lack reconvertible capital and surrender them to the cosmopolitan eclecticism
of desirable middle-class conventions. This typical instance is one of the conventions
of the genre where the makeover expert and the makeover subject battle over the
sentimental attachment people are accused of harbouring to garden plants or objects.
Most often the casualties are working-class objects or aesthetic features. In the world
of the late 1990s makeover, the depth of personal (working-class) meaning must be
sacrificed to the cleansing agency of the surface aesthetics of design principles.
In order to deliver audience entertainment, each new makeover was constructed
on the principle of difference; its central dynamic therefore becomes the endless
pursuit of novelty. This was also manifest in the eclecticism of visual codes which
typically characterised the makeover. In an episode of Home Front in the Garden for
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