Electric Metal: Industrial Gardening

[Industrial Gardening]

You know I once read about a website devoted to gothic gardening, which set me thinking that there should also be an industrial gardening site. Maybe there is one, I don't know. But in case there isn't, here is my contribution. It isn't a site, it's a page. But it'll do. Industrial is minimal, after all.

Perhaps to be totally hardcore rivet you probably shouldn't actually have a garden. Not even a windowbox. Because to be hardcore rivet you should probably live in some graffiti-covered, piss-stinking high-rise apartment block in some dystopian urban shithole somewhere. But if you *do* happen to have a garden, there are some things you can do to it to make it industrial.

Note: the perfect industrial garden should be minimal, therefore low maintainance. So don't worry, you won't have to be going off to the garden centre every weekend to look for bedding plants or spending hours pruning plants or any of that kind of crap.

So here are my industrial gardening tips:

* Concrete it over. Grass is too natural/soft. You want to go for grey, barren, harsh landscapes. With spikes.

* Replace any wooden fencing with chain link fence or barbed wire

* Add some nice rusty pieces of scrap metal. You could call it modern art, or you could just call it scrap metal. Then go get a tetanus booster

* Instead of plastic or wooden garden furniture, get some knackered out washing machines to sit on. Or maybe some rusted up cars with no wheels

* Have a blast furnace instead of a barbecue. So how do you like your meat anyway, well done or vaporised? Just stand well back when the time comes to use it, and wear your goggles

* Don't have plants. If there are already plants in your garden, use some weedkiller on them. Or dog piss seems to be pretty good for killing off plants so if you have dogs, just let them get on with their business

* Graffiti everything

* If you have a pond, don't have fish in it. Instead make it look like an inner-city canal, going for the urban shithole vibe again (i.e. put things in it like shopping trolleys, empty bottles/cans, used condoms etc)

* Continuing with the urban shithole theme, maybe you should have a tramp or two come and set up home in your garden, bringing an oil drum with a fire lit inside it. Having the tramps begging for change every time you go past them could become pretty irritating though, I guess. Set your dogs on them when they get too annoying.

* Or just sell your garden to a property developer and let them build a block of high-rise flats on it. You're too minimalist to want the hassle of gardening anyway

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