During a recent train-trip across the country I was struck by the bluegreen fields of lush grass that zipped by the windows of the carriage. No wildflowers (or weeds, depending on your viewpoint) penetrated the uniform verdure. And at numerous small stations along the route, pallets stacked high with white pods of "20-4-10" fertiliser were waiting to bolster up the monocultural grass blanket.
"A countryside reminiscent of a snooker table" where "wild flowers had been drained, weed killered, bulldozed and fertilised out of the fields" is British gardener Miriam Rothschild's description of her English midlands, but it could just as readily apply to our own over-fertile land.
On her own property, Rothschild has halted the encroachment of the green baize by surrounding her house with "lawns" containing 120 wild species - including bee orchids, wild garlic and cow parsley - and with 150 acres of flowering haymeadows. Of course, natural gardening on such a grand scale is possible only for the privileged few, but in all our gardens - no matter how small - there is scope for a more kindly approach to nature.
Some of us have been rumbling on about this sort of thing for ages, and have watched with some surprise, and then delight, as tricky words such as "organic", "native" and "harmony" are no longer mouthed with embarrassment or derision. The kind of gardening that was once seen to be the preserve of a few idealist crackpots and old hippies has become positively fashionable, as is evidenced by the current spate of television programmes and books on the subject.
Garden designer and writer John Brookes, whose best-selling Garden Design Book is to be found on hundreds of thousands of bookshelves worldwide - has given his seal of approval to this movement in his stimulating book The New Garden. In it, he leads us seductively through the whole concept, from its origins in the US and the Netherlands to its contemporary practice throughout the world today. Examples of the new style in loads of international settings are carefully detailed and illustrated with gorgeous photographs. So what exactly is this "new garden" thing? Firstly, don't be put off by the "new" bit - which does sound awfully as if it is being trumpeted up by an ad-person. And anyway, although it may be newly popular, people such as the Irish-born William Robinson (who gets no mention in The New Garden) were advocating a similar sort of practice more than 120 years ago. But never mind what it's called: this kind of gardening is rooted in a logical and unadorned idea, one so inspiringly crystal-clear that it is remarkable so many people try to operate in opposition to it. The idea is simply that we do not garden in isolation: we and our gardens are part of the big process that is nature, and the big place that is this Earth. Everything follows smoothly from that.
The setting of your garden, whether it is coastal, woodland or urban, for instance, dictates the climate and growing conditions of your particular patch, so it makes sense to pay attention to the surroundings. As an extreme and obvious example, seaside gardeners who constantly have their horticultural fantasies whipped by cruel, salt winds could save themselves a lot of grief by resisting the trays of half-hardy annuals that are everywhere now. Instead they might try something equally colourful, but salt-resistant, such as sea lavender, Limonium latifolium or the pinkflowered Hottentot fig, Carpobrotus edulis. (Alas, although these lovely plants may be grown from seed, garden-ready specimens are not the easiest to find - owing to what John Brookes calls "a homogenised garden-centre style whose tendrils have spread far and wide".) Or they might choose true natives such as sea pink, sea holly and sea kale, so that coastal gardeners will not only be growing plants engineered to survive the salty situation (they're not prefixed with "sea" for nothing), but they'll also be contributing to the general well-being of the environment by creating a natural garden. The idea of growing plants geared to a particular habitat is plainly a good one, but so often it is ignored in favour of wildly unsuitable choices such as rhododendrons (generally woodland, acid-loving plants) plonked in small, dry and limey front gardens. In that environment it would be far more successful to opt for a combination of Mediterranean-type and temperate plants: a framework of drought-tolerant shrubs (lavender, rosemary, box, thyme) enlivened by herbaceous perennials and grasses that would happily seed about the place. And what about design: how should the "new garden" be constructed? Here too, we are encouraged to look to our surroundings for inspiration, and to try to integrate our garden into the landscape by echoing its contours and materials. The garden should look as if it just grew out of the landscape, whether it is placed on the side of a Connemara mountain, on the edge of a grassland or in the middle of a town. (But is has to be said here that in John Brookes's book, the outside world is always pretty acceptable: nowhere did I see an elephantine concrete-and-corrugated shed, like the one that impinges on my little place in the landscape.)
We should take our cue not just from the natural landscape, Brookes says, but from the built and cultivated landscape too. Town gardeners, therefore, should make use of local materials - which can be seen in buildings and boundaries - while those who live in areas near, say, commercial apple-growers should incorporate their own stand of apple trees to blend in with the distant orchards.
All of this seems good news indeed, offering as it does a logical and relaxed garden doctrine that is easy and enjoyable to follow. It also spells the end of madly unsuitable plants such as Leylandii cypress. Unless, of course, you live next to a Leylandii nursery and you want to echo the regional industry in your garden!
The New Garden by John Brookes is published by Dorling Kindersley, price £16.99 in UK.
Diary date: Keen plants-people may wish to cancel all engagements next weekend (May 9th and 10th, from noon to 5 p.m.) to go to Beech Park House, Clonsilla, Dublin for a "monster" sale of plants from the famous walled garden, and of seedlings propagated from seed wild-collected in Tibet and China by head gardener Seamus O'Brien. Admission to walled garden £2. Teas available.