I so identify with Emma Beddington's disappointment, anger and distress over the horrible practice of ripping out gardens in favour of soulless, uncreative hard standing (A messy garden is a glorious garden. We need to stop tidying, titivating and paving them over, 12 April). Are people utterly impervious to the importance of nature? How can they bear to be so philistine? Are their cars their only gods? Can't they be grateful for the privilege of having a garden? Why not take pride in a verdant frontage? How about employing a gardener? And yes, please could David Attenborough be prevailed upon to help change so many people's destructive, too practical mindset towards celebrating nature, manicured or not.
Joyce Bell
Lewes, East Sussex
I live in California and am half-English - the English side of me is also drawn to a loose and messy garden, hopefully with an old ruin of a house within it. This is anathema to an American, and I leave behind me a long trail of gardens where I have dug up the concrete and someone has bought the property after me and reinstated the concrete, mulched the entire place in bark and cut down every tree and bush. This is the "low-maintenance" yard. Think what they will save on gardeners!
And forget letting your lawn grow for the insects. California now has a "Zone 0" policy - you must have 5ft of gravel or concrete all around your house for fire prevention. Zones 1 and 2 extend from that, up to 100ft, and the trees have to be so many feet apart and trimmed into meatballs on sticks. Lawns have to be kept under 4in. Dead material has to be removed. Trees can't touch. No one can really understand the rules, but Zone 0 has started. It will be a world of boiling hot concrete. Can one even call it gardening?
Meanwhile, I garden in my head and send money to England to rewild hay fields and fields of wildflowers that I will probably never see. Here's to ungardening.
Jane Warden
Malibu, California, US
Thank you for that wonderful article about the demise of household gardens. It was a timely reminder and confirmation that we are on the right path. Our garden, in the middle of suburban Townsville, Australia, is very similar to the garden shown in the photo published online with your article. We really let it evolve, and that's the key to a good garden.
After planting as many edibles as we can for that "Doomsday" event, we have seen a variety of insects and birds come and visit our garden, plus a greater number of green tree frogs. Water is also key, and with our recently installed irrigation system everything is just booming, even the weeds. But even the weeds are not bad ... they are part of the garden. We don't rip them out entirely, other than the strangling vines.
Fernando Olmos and Jennifer Smith
Townsville, Queensland, Australia
We recently sold our house. It had a pond teeming with frogs, newts, dragon flies, water boatmen, damselflies, you name it.
We asked the people buying the house if they would keep the pond, praying they'd say yes. They said no. And in the same breath said they have grandchildren - the implication being that a pond is dangerous. Our hearts sank. I'm sure I'm not alone in remembering all the ponds I regularly saw as a child: those in the local park (massive fish), my dad's friend's house (it had water snails), the little local garden centre and, best of all, a neighbour's garden where we spent hours waiting for the frogs to pop their heads out of the duckweed. Happy memories.
Denying children the joy of enjoying nature because it's assumed to be dangerous; that's almost as sad as how the frogs and newts will feel when they return from their winter lodgings to our old garden now a sea of artificial turf.
We will dig a new pond in our new garden and make sure as many children as possible see it (under close parental supervision naturally).
Rose Burn
Curdridge, Hampshire