While not everyone can have a seven-foot plaster wall painted a distressed blue to set off their plantings, almost everyone has a garage which could use a bit of color integration. Hobbs' consideration of container gardening is also filled with a sense of pushing the limits of the plain old plant in a pot. Mixing species, color and positioning all create a melange of effects and each effect can be achieved with a little effort and care. In fashion, couture is wildly impractical, largely unwearable and absurdly expensive. Yet couture is the essence of what will be seen in the shops of the world for the next couple of years.
Couture is the definition of beauty for the fashionable world.
What Thomas Hobbs has done in Shocking Beauty is present a couture collection of the very best he can see in gardens. It is audacious, risky and more than a little bold. It is also wonderful to look at. Jay Currie is the editor of the popular Vancouver, B.C. arts and culture magazine Two Chairs, as well as the editor of a new magazine aimed at greenthumbs called Into the Garden.