Using Sentimental Capital: Class, Emotion and Value - A Taste for Gardening: Classed and Gendered Practices - page 183

David : Anybody who's done that can't call themselves gardeners really.
Lisa : No.
David : It shows that they want a nice garden and they want to spend a week at the seaside
don't it?
Similarly, Rosemary told me that make-over programmes were a 'good idea for
people who are not gardeners,' adding, 'a garden grows over years.' For others,
'real' gardening was about executing garden labour properly and methodically.
For John and Stephanie, instant gardening was the antithesis of authentic garden
construction; it meant superficial, slip-shod work that simply did not warrant the title
'gardening'. Hear Stephanie's conception of communally generated garden-giving
in this exchange:
Stephanie : Cuttings and things like that, that's how gardens are built up I think over't
years. Cuttings from each others things.
John : All these programmes seem to do is change stuff that look different. They don't
actually do any gardening. They just dig an 'ole, put a water feature in, stick some trellis
in.
Stephanie : Yeah, but they've only two days 'aven't they? Takes time.
John : They just throw a bit o' bark over rough ground instead o' diggin' it out or riddling
it and putting plants in how yer should. It's just quickness, it's just hype.
While Chaney (2001) argues that those who embrace lifestyles accept the production
of authenticity using resources from the consumer and leisure industries, the
gardeners I spoke to decried manufactured gardening consumption and bemoaned
the fall of authentic methods of garden-making. Take for example, the following
points made by David about his soil and compost making:
David : I have a feeling that a lot of these blokes on gardening programmes have some
lovely soil there. They've made it look so easy for people to garden. But you see I don't
go off into a - say garden centre - and see all these lovely green and yellow coloured bags.
I never buy any. I have things out there that have been there years and years. The soil's
improved. Dug over and composted, year after year.
For these gardeners, manufactured, media make-over gardening was linked to what
they saw as the unnecessary expense of the garden centre. Hear too the commitment
to the old practice of turning the soil and adding compost oneself as a means of
caring for and respecting the garden without manufactured products. Others noted
that the problems with make-over recommendations were that they were based,
as Keith remarked, on 'spending all that money in one go'. Going to the garden
centre, for John, quite simply, 'wastes brass'. These gardeners were not interested in
improvising new lifestyle ideas from the symbolic repertoires on offer in consumer
culture. Gardening for them was about working with the authentic, and sometimes
challenging, natural materials offered by the garden itself - and if that required