Shocking Beauty

Book by Thomas Hobbs

David W. Pittelli writes amusing review on Amazon. David says Thomas Hobbs is what he says he is, an avant-gardist gardening snob. He quotes Hobbs from the book a few times to illustrate:

Some gardeners will never learn the art of plant assemblage... As I drive by their predictable efforts, I often wonder, "Is Life Easier?"

Ha ha ha, good one. 

Being a left-handed, Gemini breach-birth ALLOWS me to love tetraploid daylilies. It is WHO I AM BOTANICALLY.

Ha ha ha, another good one. I looked up tetraploid day lilies and they look fine to me.

Bowling balls are appropriate in Marcia Donahue's garden/gallery in Berkeley, California, because SHE DID IT FIRST.

Ha! These are all quite good examples of garden snobbery.

My favorite personal example of garden snobbery is guest 2 being shown by guest 1 the entry way gardening efforts of host 1 and casually remarking, "I see what he's trying to do here." Meaning tried and failed.

David describes Hobbs as obsessed with rejection of the common and clichéd, but then his featured gardens are also clichéd with repeated elements of Hobbs' own commonalities.

David's own meta opinion is that peoples' enjoyment of the arts is such because they have already done what is pretty and handsome, and current practitioners are jaded by the work of their predecessors and in their desire to be original they often produce work most non-experts find ugly. Amusingly, David says this is seen in architecture, painting, music and so far horticulture has escaped the curse of avant-guardist ugliness, but not in this book. David wondered if it is fair to say that Hobbs has passed 'Shocking Beauty' and created a book that is ugly. Then he comes to Hobbs writing at the end:

I have noticed a switch in gardening, from "pretty" to what I call "the New Ugly." I find this fascinating and very, very attractive. In gardening, UGLY HAS BEEN REDEFINED by brilliant plantsmen and -women who get absolutely no thrill from trying to make a pretty picture. By increasing the dosage of all that is weird and unexpected, these thrillseekers are creating powerful, unforgettable experiences.

"Umh, NO IT HASN'T!" Cries David. "If we wanted 'powerful, unforgettable experiences' of ugliness, we would just move into a junkyard next to an oil refinery! That said, if the book's title or dust-jacket reflected this decadent philosophy, I could rate it 4 stars"

Hobbs adds a campy dramatic element to his discovery of his Vancouver house:

I will never forget ringing the doorbell, expecting "Max," [from Sunset Boulevard] or at least Harvey Korman dressed as "Max," to open the door. Instead, a very short Alfred Hitchcock type greeted us, with a badly-wigged woman peering over his shoulder.

It isn't until the last page David learns how the garden is therapy for Hobbs, about talking to plants, which most people can't do ("and it shows"!) and about remembering gardeners who gave him plants and then died of AIDS. Life is a veil of tears, so maybe we should cut him some slack, even if we are not in love with ugliness.

That surprised me.

I bought both books and tried to overlook my umbrage with this photoshopped cover for the paperback version. These photos are copyrighted, maybe I should paint a mustache on them.

Tell me I'm wrong. The cactus does not grow in the cracks of the cement pot like that isolated from the group. The baby hen and chick cactus plants are connected to the group. They do not grow like lichen or moss. Even so, the photographs inside the book are intriguing. They are mostly vignettes and nothing so useful as garden plans and instructions. 

The thing is, I poured over the five books of Pamela Crawford's absorbing things visually and less so by words, besides, the books repeat. Now I can look at her pictures of plant groupings and name most of the plants, along the way learning which ones are good for shade and such, but I keep coming back to a lot of what makes container plant groups extraordinary is the planters themselves and you just do not see that much uncommonly beautiful things all that often. The container used for the paperback cover is beautiful. It also looks handmade from cement. 

The trick to interesting groups is when you see unique containers that you like and you can see fitting in with your other things then buy them without compunction. 

Etsy, for example, has tons of results for large containers depending on how you word the search, but this is the only thing that I saw that could work, $70.00. Not bad at all, but it is not big enough.