Should I chop down our magnolia and replace it with an art installation?

October 3, 2011 Categories: Gardening

John Crace has massive plans for his front garden – but his wife states he’s ruining her life. So who’s right?

The Tories and the Lib Dems have nothing to instruct me about compromise. I’ve just given my wife complete control of the back garden in exchange for the front. She gets a 60ft-long strip to do what she wants with – she can even do something really dull and fill it up with flowers; I get 20 feet at the front. And I reckon I got the superior deal.

I’ve turned our Streatham front garden into a semi-tropical jungle. There are ferns, tree-ferns, grasses, yuccas, palms, bananas (they’ve even been known to fruit, though the mini-bananas are inedible), dasylirions, weird dwarf pines, lancewood trees and agaves.

I love it. And so do other people. Passersby regularly stop and gawp; each time I’m out gardening at the front someone stops to chat; people take photos of it on their phone; once I even found someone loitering on the pavement who had come on the bus from Croydon specially to take a look.

But it does have a massive problem: there’s a massive magnolia tree bang in the middle of it, a tree that was there long before we moved in 15 years ago, takes up far too much space, looks wildly incongruous and blocks out the sunlight. Worst of all, my wife adores it.

Hence the deal. Thrilled with the intent of having three times the space all to herself, my wife momentarily forgot about the magnolia tree and shook on the deal. I didn’t forget about the magnolia tree. Not for a second. I’ve been thinking about tiny else in the garden for the past two years.

And now? My wife is backpedalling. She states that the deal obviously never applied to the trees. Obviously. But that’s only the start. I don’t just want to get rid of the tree; I want to place a 12ft silver-leafed blowball art installation in its place. And I then want to surround it with a whole load more banana plants.

My wife is now making all kinds of threats against me. Everything from wasting money we don’t have (true) to ruining her life (possibly also true). But a deal is a deal is a deal. Or is it?