Taking a tour around gardening blogs and gardening news sites this morning with a view to reporting something of interest to my readership I came across this article in the Telegraph.
The headline - Exposed National Trust garden devastated by snow - caught my eye initially and naturally I thought about all of that hard work by the gardeners at Castle Drogo, and the years of growth that may have been 'devastated' after the snow storms.
Reading further down however, I got a bit twitchy because of the rather sensationalistic reporting with words like 'devastated' and 'flattened' yet there was no photographic evidence, except one clearly staged shot of head gardener Andrew Midgley standing next to a bough of a tree that had pared away from the base of what looks like a large Rhododendron or a Holm Oak.
There is no reason why news of today should not be intimate, personalised and accurate. I do not trust journalists as a rule so my gut reaction would be to dismiss the story's true legitimacy.
"Some of the holm oaks along the drive, which were planted in the 1920s, have been flattened and the formal garden also lost trees to the heavy snow" - surely someone could have counted them and said for example ' three holm oaks and five trees in the formal garden.'
Next time Matthew Moore writes for his supper I think he should push the boat out and get a little more evidence to support his story.
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