Bad design kills - a gnome for the gnomes

I think we have a serious problem on our hands. I predict unrest in monolithic proportions - if the garden gnomes around the world get wind of this.

I am sorry to say this but the garden gnome has been unceremoniously dethroned as the king of all redundant garden objects. I have just found an object that (as hard as it is to believe) is more redundant than the garden gnome!

I have been looking for a sundial to use as a focal point in a garden that we are finishing up, and found that I had 2 choices. The first being unsuitable because of its rustic look, but the second was closer to what I was looking for. Until I looked closer...

It didn't work. It was made for a Northern Hemisphere garden.

The only obvious answer to its source is that it was made here in South Africa. Surely it couldn't be cheaper or at all necessary to import a piece of concrete from somewhere above the equator?

So that means it was intentionally designed that way?

The person who designed this object is fully deserving of all Dwarvish Wrath that will surely come their way. But I really hope the Gnomes don't forget to scorn the people who sell, distribute and buy a piece of rubbish like this.

I surprised myself at the irrational irritation produced during this discovery. But after giving it some more thought, I realised that what really upset me has less to do with sundials and solidarity with gnomes and more to do with lazy, short-sighted, ill thought out or just plain bad design.

To my way of thinking - a man-made object with no function must have an allegorical, or an aesthetic reason for being. This had neither.

Good design has a lot of responsibility resting on its shoulders. I believe good design should make the world a better place to live in. It should make our lives better, easier, more pleasurable, and simpler. It should save us time, or money, or give us more energy. And truly good designs should be able to fulfill many or all of those descriptions at once.

Unfortunately there are too many bad designs out there, and too many people propagating them. To a certain extent nature evolves, we should take a leaf out of her book. We as intelligent beings should be looking to improve our design with every step, and in every aspect of our lives.

And we should shun bad design as if the lives of gnomes depend on it.

Update : Steeply Sloped Garden

I got a chance today to visit a garden we completed in the beginning of winter this year. Its one of my favourite parts of my job - going back to check and see how things are going in a garden that I've planted months or even years before.

I approach these visits as if I were seeing a long lost friend again - with mixed feelings of excitement and trepidation. You're really looking forward to seeing them, but you're also wondering whether time may have been unkind to your friendship.

As much as I research, and deliberate and finally decide on a design for a garden, there are always things that I haven't bargained for, and sometimes things don't always turn out exactly as I'm expecting. Sometimes a certain plant may not have worked in its situation, other times, weather or pests have taken their toll.

But often the hard work does pay off. Sometimes I'm even pleasantly surprised to see how well things have taken. It may be a combination of plants that I'm trying for the first time or a plant that does very well in its new home. But it always makes me happy to see one of my gardens thriving.

Today was one of those days, and it also happily reinforced my love affair with grasses.  The steep slope from the road up to the house, on which we planted mainly wild grasses is covered in lush green Aristida, and the bergundy plumes of Melinis are a lovely greeting as you drive into the property. Bearing in mind that the garden was planted at the beginning of a relatively dry winter, the growth has been amazing.

The only blight on the visit, was that white ants had eaten the bark off the base of 2 of the Crossberries that we planted on the bank, and in the process assigning them to the compost heap.

The groundcover in front is Asystasia, a pretty little groundcover that thrives in coastal sand dunes, and great for stabilizing banks quickly. The plan is that in time the grove of Cross berries will hide the fence, and blur the boundary. At the same time they will help create a bit of screening from the house.

The Consequences of a Life Disconnected

I noticed today that the Jacarandas are flowering again. Here in South Africa, the purple portent was a signal to students to start studying for end of year exams. If you waited until they layed their purple carpet below the tree you were already in big trouble. How many of these natural signs do we pay attention to these days?
In the past, our ability to survive depended on our intimate knowledge, and connection with nature. We'd be watching for the migration of birds, or the lengthening of shadows to guide our decision making in everything from when to plant vegetables, to when to propose marriage.

In our modern day lifestyle, we live our lives very disconnected from nature. Seasons come and go, and we hardly notice the changes, cocooned in our temperature regulated environments. Food no longer comes from last seasons planned planting, but is neatly packaged at the local supermarket for our last-minute convenience.
Both are perfect examples of our great sophistication, our triumph over the capriciousness of life, and our ability to design our landscape to suit us. But what happened to working with nature? Good design has to be more than imposing our will on our environment, surely its got to include a harmonious relationship with the landscape.

I'm far from being ready to return to an agrarian existence, and finding ways to keep chickens in my 3rd floor apartment - as much as my cat would argue for the perfect logic of that decision. Nor do I plan on basing my decisions on the changing seasons, when science can give such exact information. But I just wonder if the repercussions of this basic disconnection are more insidious and far-reaching than we imagine.

The Answer is Blowing in the Wind

Ok, I'm not holding out for my Nobel Prize, but I have got this roof gardening thing down to a simple, easy to use formula. Here it is, but remember, you saw it here first:

roof garden + high winds = hard, scary work

Throw in the fact that even though the artificial grass we were laying weighs nearly one and a half tons, and was being lifted by the wind as if it was a pancake being flipped on a teflon pan, and the fact that there is no real service elevator to get the couple of tons of materials up onto the roof of the 10 storey building...well lets just say my calf muscles would now give Usain Bolt a run for his money.