A different world

I'm unsettled by an episode of Gardeners' World. This in itself seems like a ridiculous sentence to write, as Gardeners' World is surely the definition of benign Englishness. But perhaps it turns out that such a thing doesn't exist.

It featured a segment on the

private garden of Lord Rothschild and his family

so keep out, you proles, it's not for the likes of you. I like the "and his family" too, as if that makes it more like us. The garden, we are told,

prides itself on being completely self-sufficient all of the time

which makes it sound like some Utopian Good Life. Yet this is achieved by the employment of eight gardeners. (Although we aren't told if they are paid, so they may be victims of slavery.) So it's probably self-sufficient provided you give a large injection of cash each year.
Renowned garden designer Molly Keen^{[citation needed]} tells us that when she was first involved

It was in quite a run-down state, it was semi-market garden

as if growing fruit and vegetables for sale is beneath us, whereas a garden supported by the profits from banking and usury is somehow noble and pure.

Now, though, it was an obscene riot of fruit and vegetables. The cabbage square contained around a thousand cabbages. Most, if not all, looked nearly mature. So how long will they last, and who will eat them? As a house of four we wouldn't want much more than one cabbage a week. Being generous and saying that they will last for three months, that's ten cabbages a week that the Rothschilds need to get through. How big is his family? I wonder how much waste there is.

It all harks back to a bygone age, the idea of the big country house with its sea of forelock-tugging servants

That self-sufficiency which all estates I think before the First World [...] is (sic) simply ceased to exist. This is unique.

Well arguably it's not, since it looked very similar to The Lost Gardens of Heligan, which you can look around if you pay your shilling. So I'm not sure what this garden is for.

Lord Rothschild likes things quite over scale, so the paths are huge so that seven people can walk down then and it all seems quite grand

It all seems vain and spoiled, in the sense of a spoiled child, rather than the soon-to-be spoiled cabbages.

Speaking of the Head Gardener, she says

Sue was incredibly quick to see what the point, what the spirit of this place was.

I don't that she did. It said nothing to me.

a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

It made me think about the way that my family down the generations has seen gardening, not as acquisition and possession, but as something connected with nurturing and life and love and hope. After the segment, Monty Don commented

I think anybody who grows any veg at all is going to feel some envy there.

No, Monty, not at all.