Why Has Everything Been Hijacked by The Rich?

Even gardening

When I was a kid I used to help my grandparents in their garden. It was a modest-sized plot with a lawn, a small greenhouse and a vegetable patch. It wasn’t that big, but it was enough to subsidize their weekly shop, plus they enjoyed it.

By the time they died, they were pretty knowledgable about gardening, but like most people they didn’t boast about it. They just got on with it.

Gardening

There’s always been an industry around gardening. But at some point it got serious. Just like barbecuing got serious when it was taken over by sunburnt celebrity chefs on YouTube throwing carcasses onto a grill and pretending it was haute cuisine.

Gardening has gone the same way. Once a quaint Sunday afternoon pastime, has now crept into barbecue territory. My grandparents would be horrified.

The Garden Centre

Once upon a time — and I’m talking about the early 80s here — garden centres were like craft stores. Sparsely stocked, draughty places that sold wheelbarrows, spades, gloves, weedkiller, and out-of-date packets of seeds.

Now they sell everything — including BBQs, spatulas, grills, burners, steak seasoning and condiments. Plus all the parasols, decking, tables and seating you need to accommodate everyone. As well as every lawn mower, strimmer, leaf blower and chainsaw you can imagine.

The Chainsaw

Since when did gardeners require a chainsaw?

The most my grandparents had was a handsaw and a pair of shears. No one had a chainsaw and with good reason. They were noisy and extremely dangerous.

I don’t know where you live, but where I live in rural France, the highest admissions to the accident unit after car smashes and domestic violence, are chainsaw injuries.

Some chump wants a tree cutting down in the garden of his weekend home, and decides he can do it himself because he works in finance, and so can do anything — he’s the Master of the Universe, right?

So he goes to his local garden centre — which is now larger than a football stadium.

And he picks up a Makita battery-powered chainsaw for €700 and after charging it up, goes out into the garden to cut down a small fruit tree he could chop down with a pocket knife.

He revs up his saw, and promptly slices through his arm as he didn’t expect the ‘kickback’. Then the chainsaw falls onto his leg, slicing neatly through his femoral artery.

He cries for help wondering why he didn’t put on the safety clothing he’d bought. Then cries out a bit more. Unfortunately, his wife has gone out, and so have his neighbours. So he slumps to the ground and bleeds to death within fifteen minutes.

You may think I’m exaggerating for comic effect. I’m not. I work as a groundsman two and a half hours from Paris, and this story is as common as liver failure from drinking too much wine.

The Modern Gardener

Of course, folk can do want they want. If they want to bleed to death in their own garden, go ahead. But it highlights my point that when once upon a time, gardening was reserved for the quiet and ponderous. Now it’s reserved for the loud and brash. And the more money you spend on it, the better you are.

If you grow raspberries on a stuffy allotment, even if they’re the best raspberries in the world, you’re no longer considered a gardener, because you don’t have all the kit!!

Where are all your subsoil temperature gauges and timed irrigation systems? Why have you only got one compost bin and not five! How can you garden with only a trowel? Why are you growing raspberries when you could be growing kiwis? Don’t you watch YouTube?

What’s Next?

I’m talking about gardening, but I could be referring to a whole raft of hobbies and pastimes that have been hijacked by the rich. The better the equipment, the bigger the ego, the bigger the dick.

Of course, none of this is new: money has dictated perceived greatness for centuries. Leisure pursuits like skiing and sailing have been emblems of the wealthy for decades. Then came cycling, running, yoga, and barbecuing. Plus a hundred other things from skittles to bungee jumping.

The only thing I thought would never be hijacked by money was gardening. Too slow, too thoughtful, too uncool.

I was wrong, and these days I dread going to the garden store in case I get knocked down by a man wheeling a cart stuffed with BBQs, weedkiller, and geraniums. I wonder what's next. Chess?

Thanks for reading, for more hobbies and pastimes, check out