TRAVELING ROUNDABOUT THE GARDENS OF ENGLAND (THE OVERSEAS TRAVELS OF ANN OSTENDORF)

Editor's note: Ann Ostendorf of Cape Girardeau is taking a year to travel to England, Pakistan and Asia. This is the first in a series of articles she will be writing about her journey.

While preparing for my trip to England I realized there was actually little preparing to be done. I would have no drastic cultural changes to psyche myself up for and this was exactly what I wanted. As little culture shock as possible for the first leg of my journey sounded great. I knew all the major aspects of life, like language and cuisine, would be basically the same. Most things did turn out to be basically the same. I quickly learned not to order pie for dessert unless I wanted a mouthful of steak and gravy. And once, on hearing a man warn a boy not to fall in the drink, I felt silly for scanning the landscape looking for giant cups or miniature boys.

Then I realized he was only referring to the river.

Luckily, I have managed to get along just fine, despite the differences between the UK and U.S.

That's not to say that some small differences haven't made a big impact on me. Two of the most memorable, yet minute, aspects of English life that have been recurring themes during my time here are gardens and roundabouts.

The English version of a garden is quite nice actually, although I have yet to see any vegetables grown in them. Instead, they consist of flowers and plants usually organized into themed areas. The house I have been staying at has a wetlands theme for part of their garden. A miniature waterfall trickles through strategically placed rocks into a pond full of tadpoles, fish and water plants. This is bordered by moss covered rocks that must be watered daily if the sun has come out and it hasn't rained. The pond is met at one end by a "bog garden" whose plants are kept wet at all times by a buried sheet of plastic. The bog garden is also home to a 3-foot heron statue.

All this is in an area less than my living room and about half the size of the average English home. The goal of all English gardeners, (aka all the English), is to fit as many plants and as little grass into their yards as possible. My hostess has accomplished this successfully by spreading small pebbles around every plant. I must admit, she did an excellent job of redecorating her garden. I know this because I am a privileged viewer of the before, during and after photo album. She isn't the exception though. If everyone in the neighborhood tore down their fences, hedges, and implements of privacy, they could charge admittance to their villages as a botanical garden.

The English love of placing plants, flowers and other gardening paraphernalia into fantastic arrays of shapes and patterns have seeped out of their private gardens and into the public areas. Nowhere is the love of gardens more evident publicly that at the center of the every present and oh-so-popular roundabout. A roundabout, for those who don't know, is a means of moving traffic at an area where three or more roads intersect. In a case where five roads meet, like all over London, an odd shaped "double-roundabout" can form. There aren't stop signs or traffic lights, just roundabouts and their effectiveness is both frightening and amazing. Its amazing that you don't have to stop to change directions but it's frightening that no one else does either. Roundabouts work particularly well in England because they have no straight roads. So, after rounding a curve, instead of having to slam on your brakes and come to a screeching halt, in England you merely have to come to a screeching slow-down. After 10 years of driving experience on mad windy roads, most English declare themselves experts and pretend they drive for NASCAR. I'm actually quite surprised there aren't more professional British race car drivers seeing the roads they grow up driving on. These conditions bring me to questions the decision to plant something as visually appealing in the center of four lanes of spinning traffic as a garden.

Despite my tremendous fear of British roadways, the roundabout, excluding the central garden, is a feat of modern engineering. My favorite perk of the roundabout is when you aren't sure which road to take, you can keep circling till someone finds it on the map (or you vomit). Or, if there is a castle to one side of the road, as there often is, you can keep circling till you find your camera and the light is just right. Although I haven't become a believer in the English style of driving, they have certainly convinced me of the usefulness of the roundabout.

While pondering these various nuances of "British culture," I've sought after the essence of what makes us different from them. There must be one root cause of all the small things making the British the way they are. The answer I've reached while trying to discover true "Britishness" is ... shrubbery.

Q: Why make the roads windy?

A: The more miles to line with shrubbery.

Q: Why flowers and not vegetable gardens?

A: Who ever heard of shrubbery in a vegetable garden?

Q: Why make the houses so small?

A: More room for shrubbery.