Gardens are the places where humans live out their fantasies about how their relationship with nature should be. Supposed oases of calm and tranquility in the midst of the ‘juggling’, ‘plate-spinning’ and other metaphorical acrobatics of modern life, they are small areas of designed land where we can exert control. Oases indeed they often are: for wildlife they can offer a refuge from the urban and rural deserts we have made. Hedgehogs, toads, bees, foxes, robins – all are noted to depend on gardens for their survival.

However, gardens can also be quite the opposite of oases. Gardening could be said to be the skill of making something grow somewhere it doesn’t belong whilst carefully removing everything that does. Roses, lavenders, peonies, rhododendrons, rosemary – all non-native plants common in gardens. Many are utterly useless to wildlife – to ‘native’ nature (though the picture is complicated); many cannot thrive on British soils and in British climates without perpetual dousing in lime, fungicides and insecticides. Even if derived from a native species, the cultivars themselves have been carefully bred to highlight those aspects of the wild plant deemed useful or beautiful. The result is a vile, gaudy array of cosmetically enhanced specimens; as fake as silicon breasts, botox smiles and hair implants.

The worst thing that one can ever do to a garden is to leave it to its own devices. A so-called ‘overgrown’ garden is known to reduce the value of the houses in the neighbourhood by several thousand pounds. (What kind of word is overgrown in a world of declining biodiversity?) We all know the kind of people who live in houses with such gardens, and we don’t want them for neighbours. Wild, unkempt people with tattoos; smokers, probably on drugs, with hundreds of illegitimate, neglected, barefoot children all half-siblings of each other, terrorizing the neighbourhood with foul language, greasy hair and second hand clothes. In the UK, Community Protection Notice legislation can be used to criminalize people who don’t keep their garden tidy. Some councils even have webpages where you can report an untidy garden (at the time of writing, four I could find were Barking and Dagenham, Bristol, Gateshead, Newcastle-under-Lyme). Put simply, we cannot bear for anyone to break the illusion that we are the masters of nature, and in some cases, enforce the fantasy with the law.

Far from being patches of peace, gardens are landscapes of violence and oppression. Trees are clipped and pruned, lawns mowed, edges strimmed, hedges trimmed. Each task has a special tool of whirring mechanical blades to keep nature in order. The chemical industry is also on-hand with solutions for problems that blades cannot so easily solve. In garden centres the country over, shelves are stacked with fertilizers, insecticides, fungicides, weedkillers and slug pellets. Food for the things we like; poisons for those we don’t. Some gardeners simply give up and opt for convenient, low-maintenance suppression with tarmac, paving and chippings.

Provision for wildlife is equally selective. We napalm a dandelion (the seeds of which I have watched goldfinches eating), but import tons of peanuts and sunflower seeds from around the world to feed the birds with. I have seen sparrows dust-bathing in molehills, but we trap and kill moles, and build our own bird baths. Indeed, birds do well out of gardens, because we like their pretty singing. Baths, houses, feeders; a panoply of goods are available to attract them to your ‘space’. It simply doesn’t occur to us to feed the birds by planting native species (or allowing them to seed and grow of their own accord), which not only provide seeds that birds can eat, but also attract insects to provide further food. But that wouldn’t involve buying things; that would mean we weren’t doing our bit for the economy as well as for nature. Mammals fare rather less well. We don’t mind hedgehogs, but rats, mice, squirrels, and moles are not provided for. Amphibians and reptiles are generally forgotten about, and insects and other invertebrates are, if not pests, then just plain disgusting; exceptions are bumble bees, ladybirds, butterflies (not moths or caterpillars) and worms.

Gardens are displays of wealth and power, and hence of self-esteem. The further we can take the larger area of land from whatever would happen to it if we did nothing, and the more maintenance required to sustain it thus, the greater our wealth and power and sense of self-worth. Lawns used to be such a display, because they required teams of gardeners with scythes to maintain them. Pathetically, lawns continue to reflect status, even though machines replace the gardeners. The lawn is a deliberate area of monoculture. One species only is to be there, and that is the particular variety of grass planted. Clover, daisies and moss are not to be present, regardless of the fact that clover is a valuable source of nectar for bees (several species of which are in decline), and the UK’s moss (and other bryophyte species) are of global significance.

Even in the Bible, gardens are scenes of sin and betrayal. From Eden to Gethsemane, gardens are where the perfect is soiled, the godly profaned. Gardens model our relationship with the environment and for once the Bible truly is prophetic. Our sin is excessively focusing on our own aesthetic; our betrayal the direct and indirect destruction of the species that quietly keep our planet alive.