Live-In Gardeners

After visiting a number of out-of-town shopping complexes today, I've come home slightly depressed. Everywhere I've been has shared the same tired, beaten-up, sad and forlorn look. You know, big warehouse style buildings with attached car-parks surrounded by scraggly, unkempt bushes, litter, all permeated by a general sense of malaise.

Now consider the country-gardens of old, or the temples of the East - Where buildings are cared for and the surrounding gardens tended by staff who's motivation is primarily one of pride. How to instil this sense of attendance to the small things in today's modern world?

Patronage. If each complex, or out-of town shopping centre employed a gardener, on a live-in basis, and on the premise that the grounds were theirs to tend and keep in order, then assuming the correct people were chosen for the job, many of these horrible places would, over time, be transformed into places of beauty.

I'm talking fountains, shady walks to and from the car-park, tended lawns, trees gently blowing in the breeze, and an old friendly guy who knows and cares for each site like no-one else.