Green architecture can help beautify modern houses that are often surrounded by hard surfaces. There is soil somewhere underneath all the concrete, tile and wooden decks. Sometimes a weed manages to grow through and poke its green head out.
But for the most part the emphasis has been placed on not having anything to do in a garden. It is assumed that the people who have invested so much in a house also want a no maintenance garden. In many places gardens are relegated to a strip of lawn and a few pots of succulents.
There are outside spaces sometimes designated as outside rooms and they are usually filled with outdoor dining facilities and a gas or electric barbecue. They are shaded by sails or perspex roofing.
Children may have been given an outside play area but it is most likely set in a deary expanse of wood chips.
If a dog is permitted in this sort of landscape he will be expected to stay in his basket until he gets a walk through suburban streets. He will not be allowed to dig in the sacred lawn if such a thing has been allowed into all this sterility.
It is sad to cruise through our streets and see all these smart treatments of the outside world.
There was a time not so long ago when houses were built on parcels of land that allowed a garden both in the front of the house and the back. Now houses have grown bigger and the land has shrunk so that not even a clothes line can be fitted in.
What madness is this?
Houses that provide great spaces within and nothing without.
We have virtually thrown ourselves out of the potential garden of Eden.
Admittedly we had to work in those gardens but we still could. Even if we feel we have no time we find it for other often more dreary endeavours. We could find an hour or two to give to beauty and the environment.
Gardens can still be low maintenance and productive.
Vegetable gardens can be set up on Esther Dean’s no dig principle which uses newspaper straw and hay together with compost to produce more food than a small family can eat.
Fruit trees are beautiful in all the four seasons of the year.
How much better it could be to shade your outside table with a pergola where grape vines and passion fruit hang in their season.
How beautiful a hedge of rosemary would be and how well its sprigs would flavour your food.
The soil under your home may be heavy clay or light sand but any soil can be turned into the right sort of loam in which to grow your plants.
Take time to plan a garden in whatever you have left after the builders leave. See where the sun is, where the wind blows, where it is shady and where a tree could enhance your world.
Don’t be put off by thinking you may have to sweep up leaves or fallen blossoms or even fruit. You have to sweep all those hard surfaces anyway.
Embrace green architecture give yourself a lemon tree so that in spring you will have the perfume of the flowers and in winter the lovely yellow globes hanging among glossy green leaves. Oh and of course the ability to pick yourself a lemon for your salad dressing.
