What is Style?
It’s difficult to say, isn’t it? We all know that we’re supposed to have a personal style, but what it is, and how it manifests itself, isn’t so obvious. As we get older and move away from the insistence of fashion into understanding what suits us and makes us feel comfortable, our clothing style tends to emerge – we no longer look like all our mates, we look like ourselves (whether that includes Style with a capital S is another matter; if you’re one of those who wears drip dry shirts or track trousers, assume you need to work on your Style!) and feel uncomfortable if we’re pushed out of our comfort zone; whether that’s a WAGs tan and Manolo Blahniks for the school run, or wellies and a pushbike to do the grocery shopping.
Garden style though, is a more complex equation. It includes the limitations of our location, what we’ve inherited from previous owners, the input of our family and friends and our practical ability to grow things or maintain things. This means that although garden makeover programmes still top the viewing lists, and most of us have a clear idea what we want our green spaces to look like, our actual gardens still look very much as they did twenty years ago.
The easiest things to change in a garden are furnishings and fixtures, but often these are the last things we bother with, sitting on our ratty, saggy old loungers looking out at the sea of dandelions and broken gnomes, thinking ‘next year I’ll sort all this out …’.
To start with the simplest things, pick a furniture style that matches your overall ambition for your garden, invest in the best quality furniture you can afford, and build your garden (literally) around it.
Over the next few weeks we’ll explore three styles: French Provincial, Urban Chic and Hacienda, to see how you can makeover your entire garden on a reasonable budget and without making any design bloopers.
Posted by The Allotment Blogger on Tuesday, July 24, 2007
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