A lack of creativity

My first approach to the British gardening happened, several years ago, through a book by Andrew Wilson translated in Italian. It was about urban gardens, treating some of his early work in London. The gardens were generally simple, often using materials that nowadays we would call “recycled”. I was captivated by his work, and I often used it as inspiration for some of the gardens I made in Italy. Well, at least where the client’s budget allowed it. Gardening in Italy, especially in the area I’m from, is quite different from gardening in UK: there’s a huge chasm between the top end clients, who can afford paying for a project and every stages till the garden completion, and the common clients, who would prefer to do everything in its own to save money. In this chasm, more a moat to be honest, few intermediate customers swim or float, desiring a beautiful garden but wishing to spend little. Feeding my business mostly with the bottom end customers, since the top end were exclusive of the big plant nurseries in Pistoia, I tried to catch as often as possible clients from the wide moat. Not easy task, though.

Since England is famous for its people passion about gardens, I have to say that what I found in London left me quite disappointed. Probably such a passion seems bigger than it is because of the confront with the Italian reality, where too many people would like to cover their gardens with concrete or tarmac and can’t do it just thanks to the restrictive Italian laws. But even if the British situation is not so exciting as information arriving to Italy made me think, it’s still really inviting. It offers a lot of opportunities and much better wages respect to Italy. Well, much better if you don’t consider operative and supervisor wages and if you don’t make a comparison with the living costs. But this is an other story.

Probably for this big offer so many people were attracted in to the industry. Industry which offers, respect to Italy, a lot more chances for designers. And this is the sore point. I worked for some companies in these three years, had collaborations with many, had the chance to have a look to the work of even more. Honestly I can’t count the number of gardens I walked in during this time. And I don’t speak about projects and portfolios I could examine. A lot of them from the very top end. In the last period, since I started to look for a new job, it became even more intense. Well, too often, getting in a garden I’ve never been before, it was like a déjà vu. Red wood cedar, squared water features,  black slates. Poor planting, often with second choice plants. So many gardens looking alike. Less and less a real gardening made with plants.

A couple of weeks ago, during an interview, I asked to the designer I was speaking to, whose company’s work were pretty much all the same, if it was the market asking for that style or if it was the company choice. It was their choice: they replicated their own projects with the aim to use always the same materials, known as long-lasting and reliable. Any form of creativity had been sacrificed to pragmatism. Then I have to assume that other designers made the same choice. And that others simply lack the capability to create something in their own and can’t avoid to replicate somebody else work.

I have nothing against pragmatism. Especially when you have to maintain the garden, you can’t fancy extravagances. But a silly design is something extraneous to creativity. And in the same way pragmatism and creativity don’t exclude each other. Even the scarcity of creativity in itself wouldn’t be so bad. Design involves it, of course, but the history of art is plenty of “duplicators” who dug a niche for themselves copying the masters’ works and never created an original work. Not everybody can be creative. But... there are so many sources to draw from!!!

I have to say that this situation worries me a little bit. I found very little of original in London, and that little was mostly made in the past. The nowadays metropolis is interested just in making money, this philosophy have infected a big number of people. An old system to loyalize the clients is to make them used to your product. Never change it, always keep the same standards. It has been with the wine, for example: same colour, same flavour, same taste year after year. In the end the client will dislike anything different. How much time before the tasteless customers, fed by a generation of creativit(y)less designers, will have all the old, original, hidden gardens of London covered with red wood cedar and black slabs? As Monico palace in Piccadilly Circus has been covered with advertising neon lights, so will the charm of a city be covered with pragmatism?