Godly gardening

In the UK, we are a nation of garden lovers. We may not be Capability Brown, or even Monty Don, but two and a half million of us watch ‘Gardener’s World’ every week.

There are 23 million gardens in the UK, which if put together cover an area of a million acres, roughly one-fifth the size of Wales. That’s more than all our national nature reserves put together.

Even in our biggest cities, gardens account for a surprisingly high proportion of the urban area. Would you have guessed that almost a quarter of the area of London is private domestic garden space? And that’s to say nothing of allotments, parks and other urban green spaces.