But most - and figures provided by the American Management Association back this - had not seen improved results."It's not that layoffs are good or bad, but that there are good layoffs and bad layoffs There seem to be two approaches to downsizing. The first type, which we found among two-thirds of the companies we studied, was a simple, across-the-board cost-cutting approach. The answer will depend on whether they are persuaded by the likes of Stephen Roach, the chief economist at Morgan Stanley who dramatically switched sides this month, that while downsizing yields short- term shareholder gains (last year Wall Street stocks rose by 30 per cent), it hampers economic growth and competitiveness in the long run.Prof Nohria, who has analysed the effects of downsizing on the top 100 US companies, believes the evidence supports Mr Roach's new conclusions. "There simply is no stomach any more for more of these job cuts," one union leader declared. The very next day the chairman of the new conglomerate denied that the merger would slash jobs and promised: "We're going to take care of our employees".Opponents of downsizing wonder whether this is genuine or whether US businesses are merely waiting for the fuss to die down before resuming the job-cutting. The newly emboldened unions, fearing that many of the 137,000 workers employed by the two firms would be laid off, fired a warning shot across the corporate bows. Companies are much more cautious about downsizing because of the political heat they are likely to invite."A case in point was provided on 22 April when the two biggest telephone companies on the eastern seaboard, Bell Atlantic and Nynex, announced they were merging.

Newsweek labelled the heads of AT&T and IBM "corporate killers"."There has been a severe backlash," says Professor Nitin Nohria of the Harvard Business School "The AT&T announcement was the beginning of it. Mr Buchanan, previously associated with right-wing, religious causes, turned his attention to beleaguered workers, urging them to pick up their pitchforks and storm the ramparts of the corporate barons. And the emerging "anxious class", in the phrase of the Labour Secretary, Robert Reich, is turning angry as the perception takes hold that while companies are doing well, employees are not.The best boost to Pat Buchanan's run for the Republican presidential nomination was provided by the telecommunications giant, AT&T, when it announced plans at the start of the year to lay off 40,000 employees. Bring back Dame Vera.The second part of Michael Leapman's "Gardening in the Landscape" is in the Sunday Review.. Martin Clunes, Leslie Ash and Neil Morrissey, from Men Behaving Badly, will get up to rude mischief in You magazine's kitchen garden.Hello! magazine sponsors the Positive Retirement Garden for Help the Aged, while British Sky Broadcasting, in its first appearance at Chelsea, is represented by a New England Cottage Garden, "a mix of spontaneity, whimsy and good old-fashioned common sense".If more proof were needed of Chelsea's plunge down-market, Miss England, Angie Bowness, will launch the Toro Wheel Horse Classic rose, "a compact floribunda with pointed buds" named after a lawnmower.