Jealous Much?
Overview
For comedian, actress, writer and professional cultural ranter Joanna Hausmann, no garden is too sacred to skewer. Here she tears through society’s most infamous cultivated spaces with her sharp wit, side eyes and gloriously unfiltered observations.
Artwork by Caitlin Hickey
Martha Stewart. Enough Said
★★★★★ because I’m scared
I would be terrified to breathe incorrectly in this garden. I don’t know how someone breathes incorrectly but I know that I would, and I know someone would scream to me exactly why. Don’t get me wrong, plants are immaculate. But you just know there are hidden lasers that activate if you look at a fern too long. I have never experienced fight or flight in a botanical setting before but yet here we are. I’d need to take a Klonopin just to walk the perimeter of this thing. You accidentally step on the lavender and you’d immediately be sent to a labor camp.
Edward Scissorhands
★★★★★
HATE IT! NO! NO NO NO! Why would I want my hedges to look like a giant hand? Or a huge ass swan? Or a bat? I DON’T WANT MY GARDEN MAKING EYE CONTACT WITH ME. This whole aesthetic feels like the landscaping equivalent of ordering dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets as a grown adult. If you like this, go to therapy you lil weirdo.
Every Nancy Meyers Movie Ever
★★★★★
A lush, sun-dappled paradise of roses and artfully weathered terracotta that makes you feel cozy but also… deeply insecure about yourself and every life decision you’ve ever made. Every plant literally radiates generational wealth. The hydrangeas have a Roth IRA (I don’t even know what that is) and the herb garden went to Vassar and is super fucking annoying about it. I know I will never, in this lifetime or the next, achieve the taste level required to deadhead these roses and it low key makes me want to deadhead myself. Four out of five stars because although it makes me feel inadequate about myself, it’s exactly where I’d want to rekindle things with my ex-husband, who is a hot architect who is also super old and is also sleeping with my coastal grandma.
House Of Blues | Kill Bill Vol.1
★★★★★ but ★★★★★ if I’m going to be stabbed there
Three stars under normal circumstances because it’s cold and austere. But the moment I’m about to be murdered in a hauntingly beautiful, highly choreographed way? This garden is 5 stars. The clean lines. The silence. The gravel crunching beneath your feet as you try to run away from a hot woman with a sword. Wow. Would I brunch here? I mean, no. But would I bleed out here? Absolutely. No hesitation.
Mr. Miyagi’s Dojo from Karate Kid
★★★★★
Look, I get it. Mr. Miyagi is a busy man. He’s got other people’s cars to wax, other people’s fences to paint. I don’t expect him to go beyond the bonsais and the rocks. But - and I understand this may be controversial - a bonsai is to a tree what a dollhouse is to a house. And rocks are just rocks. I’m giving this three stars because the man is a legend but the garden is not.
Jennifer Aniston’s Garden
★★★★★
If hair were a garden, this would be Rachel Green’s. You can try to attain this garden…. You can show your gardener a picture and say ‘Hey Carl, I want it to look like this.’ He’’ll nod. He’ll do their best. But you don’t have the residual checks, or honestly, the bone structure to pull this off. And that’s okay (is what I say to myself). Five stars. Saved it to my phone under ‘goals.’... It’s been there for three years
