Stop calling it a British garden. Because it’s not.
Those fuchsias? Foreign. That unruly wisteria covering your cottage wall? Not from here. The lavender lining your path? Mediterranean, thank you very much. And yes, even your daffodils, the daffodils, came from Spain and Portugal.
By 1800, we’d shipped in around 9,000 ornamental species from every corner of the globe. Nine thousand. That ‘quintessentially British’ garden you’re so proud of? It’s basically a botanical passport collection. A green United Nations. A delicious array of cultures and stories.
I’m deadheading roses in my community garden. Beautiful day. A quintessential English scene. Then it hits me. Not one single plant I can see is actually native. Not one.
The garden everyone’s spent years fussing over, the one that feels so deeply English you could cry into your tea about it? Completely foreign. Persian roses. Chinese clematis. Japanese anemones. Every last one of them. Shriek. An immigrant.
Those mad plant hunters from the 18th and 19th centuries, tramping through jungles and mountains, stuffing seeds into ship holds?
They weren’t destroying British gardens. They were building something better. Not British. Not foreign. Something far richer: a living, breathing botanical repository of global connection.
Think about it. Your garden isn’t just pretty. It’s a story about centuries of exchange, and curiosity.
So here’s your challenge: walk through your garden or local park. Really look. How many plants can you trace back to their actual homeland?
And when you do find that ‘immigrant’ plant, go find someone whose heritage is from the same place and ask them what they know about it.
Either they will or they won’t, and you might just be surprised.