The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is plainly a bit stuck for something to do now there’s plenty to eat, the environment’s knackered and the Labour party thinks a rural affair is something that happens in Jilly Cooper’s head.

So it’s filled its time compiling a report that indicates by next year almost 2.2m homes in Britain will not have a private garden. This is because developers are building lots of flats and — I never would have guessed — “the likelihood of having a garden is greater for larger detached dwellings than flats”.

There are, however, some interesting nuggets in the forest of truisms. Apparently, two-thirds of all London’s front gardens are now largely covered with concrete, paving or gravel rather than vegetation. Many back gardens have been sold to developers, who find it much easier to get planning permission for these infill sites than they do out in the sticks.

Naturally, all sorts of busybodies will now be running around demanding that brownfield developments must stop and that everyone must replace their gravel drives with lavender or carrots.

I believe there is another way of looking at this. If people are paving over their front lawns and selling their back gardens to Messrs Bryant and Barratt, it must mean they value a car-parking space and an extra bit of dosh more than they value spending half their weekend huffing and puffing behind a lawnmower.

Did you know that 27% of adult male heart-attack victims are struck down while cutting the grass? You didn’t? That’s because it's not true. But I bet the real figure is huge.

Whatever, the fact is that huge numbers of people plainly don’t like having a garden, and I can understand why. It’s because once you start gardening, there is no end, no point at which you can say, “It’s finished.” Because it never is.

First of all, there’s the bothersome business of choosing from a vast array of plants, all of which have Latin names so people in garden centres can laugh in your face when you get it wrong. Flustered, you will make a panic purchase of something that is pink and won’t grow in your particular garden because it’s not north-facing, or the soil is too acidic, or the wind’s too strong. And even if it does grow, it will turn out to be either a twig or something so rapacious that within five months it will have eaten your lawn, your shed, your house and most of your children.

First, though, it will eat your satellite dish. All plants do this. No matter how hard you encourage them to grow in one direction, they will make a beeline for the dish, so that in the middle of your favourite show you suddenly get a notice saying no signal is being received. Which means you have to go outside, in the wind and the rain, with a pair of secateurs and some dynamite to try to get your clematis out of Bruce Forsyth’s ear.

I have a rose that, in its desperation to get at my satellite dish, actually murdered three trees that lay in its path. It used them as a launch pad, until the poor things couldn’t cope with the weight and snapped. Gravel does not do this.

I’m sure it’s possible to untangle a rose from a tree but it’s even more difficult and time-consuming than untangling the cable for your iPod. It’s more bloody as well. And anyway, once you embark on a project such as this, there is no end. Next thing you know, you’ll be in a greenhouse, making potions with a pestle and mortar, and not sleeping at night because of greenfly. Nobody ever loses sleep over their decking.

The worst thing about gardening, though, is the pruning. We’re told that for a plant to become strong and tall so it may hide the block of flats your neighbour built on his vegetable patch, you must cut it back every year. You only have to look at the Brazilian rainforest to know this is rubbish.

Here we have an area the size of Wales, or is it the Albert Hall? Either way, it’s the most beautiful garden in the world. And every time someone comes along to prune it a bit, so they may grow some cows, nature lovers get all cross.

Gardening is like doing a jigsaw. A pointless way of passing the time until you die. Pruning is like putting the completed picture back in the box so that you can start again. And the net effect is that the tree you planted to shield the neighbours’ new skyscraper is now only 2in tall and looks stupid.

But I haven’t finished yet. About 12 years ago a friend and I both planted yew hedges. Mine has been pruned vigorously every year and is now about 6ft tall and extremely boring. Hers was never pruned and, consequently, is a mass of topiary giraffes and farmyard animals. The only thing I could sculpt mine into is a mouse.

Let’s just say you do like a garden, that you don’t mind dragging your lawnmower through the house every weekend, and that you like digging. Fine. But because you are an amateur and your garden is likely to be fairly small, and because you are British and you therefore think pansies are pretty, you will end up with something that looks like a sponsored roundabout in Milton Keynes.

There are some great gardens in this country. But yours isn’t one of them. Yours looks like it was planted and maintained by Ardman’s Double Glazing.

And it’s not somewhere you can ever sit and relax, because every time you try, you will notice a bit of moss that needs removing or a beetle that needs spraying or a flower that needs deadheading. So you’ll be up and down like a pair of whore’s drawers, until one day, while doing a bit of hedge trimming, you will cut through the cord and be killed. Or you will have a heart attack. You will not be there when your grandchildren get married. And you would have been if only you’d sold the damn garden to Bryant Homes and spent the money on a decent holiday every year instead.

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