When I was young, I lived in a large house with a big garden filled with tumbling roses and luscious shrubs, but I only cared about our swing. When I was older, I lived in a tiny flat without even a window box, but I only cared about work and wine.
Then, at 27, I moved into my boyfriend’s [broadcaster and journalist Giles Coren] house, which had high ceilings and a working fireplace and was horrified to discover that he only cared about... the garden.
The way he talked about this scrappy lawn, edged with a straggle of ferns and bay trees, was like it was an undiscovered early project by Gertrude Jekyll, executed during a punk north-London phase.
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I was stunned by the suggestion that I, too, might care about this plant jumble sale, that we should take a turn around it at dusk on summer evenings in order to admire those spiky whatsits and that climbing thingy and have a conversation about what might go in that space, there. ‘Swingball? Giant chess? I dunno,’ I said.
Why was he asking me this? I didn’t expect him to care about the Ligne Roset ‘Togo’ or Addison Ross lacquered trays indoors. We stared at each other with blank incomprehension. We got married anyway (both desperate) and I still live in that house with that garden, and I know this is sacrilege, but I still can’t get excited about it.
As far as I am concerned, a London garden is a buffer zone between human beings and the more savage kind of fox, and somewhere for a compost heap. Nowadays it is also a place for my cricket-mad son to launch aeroBalls into our neighbours’ gardens.
I know this is a weird attitude. Especially now green things and gardening are so very fashionable, with actual grown men calling themselves ‘Plant Daddies’. Every household on our street decants into their gardens in the summer. The evening air is filled with the sound of clinking cutlery, popping wine corks and sizzling barbecues. Not us!
I have never understood the English mania for eating al fresco, which I have always assumed translates as ‘with wasps’. My husband will come round to my point of view eventually. To get me into the garden, you need to give me a view of something other than No 12’s Big Green Egg and the council bins. And then install a swing – one that goes really high and makes your tummy go funny.
In the dappled shade of a small silver-birch copse, I’ll need a wide hammock that doesn’t spin you into a cocoon then dump you onto the floor. On the hammock, let’s have some cushions covered in Tissus d’Hélène fabrics, and also somewhere to slot a glass of rosé and somewhere nearby to keep the aforementioned rosé cold.
In this garden I also need a cricket net, because fetching all those aeroBalls is a chore, and a nice ornamental pond with some goldfish in, to entertain my cat.
You want to eat outside? Okay, darling, in that case build me a pergola covered with mature wisteria, accessorised with solar-powered fans on full blast to keep the wasps away and actually comfortable chairs, please. I am too old now to perch on those white iron monstrosities, which will leave weird patterns on the back of my thighs.
Is an indoor/outdoor rug too much to ask for? And perhaps a big white wall and a projector for the showing of an evening movie? A shower, built in the Balinese style, would mean I can keep watching the movie and also get ready for bed – so just need to add a cupboard for my face creams and somewhere for towels to go.
The kids will need a bunk bed, of course. And somewhere to plug a kettle in, the cat’s worm medicine and my eye mask, and... In fact, do you know what? I might just go back inside.
