John Blakemore writes that “The garden, as site and as a source of still life subjects, has been of significance in my practice since the early 1980s. Has become for me a more contained, a more private landscape.

The 'Garden', space of myth, nostalgia and commerce, occupies a position, is an interface between 'nature and culture. In the early 80s Catherine introduced me to the delights of making a garden, as an inevitable result I encountered (for the first time) garden centres.

The contemporary garden centre embodies all the elements of myth and culture pertaining to the garden in an extreme form. Promoting the garden as a place dedicated to leisure. Plants, yes, both natural and artificial, but a proliferation of the 'essential paraphernalia of the good life. Garden furniture, in incredible variety, chairs, benches, seats in profusion, provide a multiplicity of 'sitting opportunities'. Hot tubs, barbeques, both small and of incredible dimensions.

A proliferation of plastic fauna, 'nature' in artifice, rabbits, birds, deer, frogs in bathing suits.

And the debased remnants of earlier cultures, the plastic Davids complete with fig leaf, Victorian romantic, bare breasted nymphs, the 'Three Graces'. Plastic plants and 'Modesty', £49.95.

The garden as commerce, a cornucopia of the practical and the absurd. A picture making opportunity impossible to resist.” (John Blakemore, Photographs 1955-2010, **Dewi Lewis Publishing, 2011 (p134))