Great garden gnomes
Gnomes are small and they live underground. Their name probably comes from the Greek genomos “earth-dweller”. So they are very respectable creatures with a longer history than the Americans.
The first garden gnomes were made in Germany in the mid-1800s and gnomes are still better-loved by the Germans than by any other people. Philip Griebel made terracotta gnomes for gardens because of their famous willingness to help with the gardening after dark.
If you have seen some ugly examples in gardens – please don’t blame the gnomes. Tell the owners to find better gnome suppliers and to treat them with unfailing kindness.
One other point: hide your gnomes in dark places. Do not put them the full, hurtful, glare of sunlight. Just don’t do it.
The organizers of the Chelsea Flower Show have a ban on gnomes but their ancestry is perfectly respectable. The word comes from Latin, with a root in ancient Greek, and represents a belief, widespread in archaic Indo-European animist culture, that gods live in the Earth. Gnomes are therefore as decent as Venus and Diana, and any divinity can be represented in good or bad taste. Fashionable in Victorian Britain after Sir Charles Isham displayed figurines he had brought back from Germany in his rockery, the prejudice against gnomes results from their subsequent popularity with the working classes.
