What your front garden says about you

Most city front gardens take one of three soul-destroying forms: a) Upsetting: mostly car, plus a bag of shoes, three jealously guarded wheelie bins, a self-sown sycamore and a St George’s flag.b) Labour-intensive: plastic flamingos and humorous signs dotted about like chicken pox among ferocious neon roses; urine-coloured dahlias the size of your head; a resin half-barrel water feature; miniature conifers in wellington boot-shaped containers; a tiny lawn with a small, unsteady swinging chair; and an old-fashioned pram planted with red and white petunias (Arsenal).c) Kill me: overpruned olives in grey containers, expensive paving, front door in Farrow & Ball French Gray, a single smokebush and (to demonstrate that the owners still have an eye for colour ) five well-spaced heuchera Lime Marmalade plants.

Ecologically, they’re all bad: more concrete, less nature. But today my main complaint (and I have many) is their dullness.

As soon as the weather turns mild, the reluctant novelist’s mind turns to exercise. There’s no excuse not to walk to the library; if I can force myself, I stagger home again too. It’s a tedious journey: two miles each way of big roads, a railway bridge, long stretches with little to look at but crumbling stucco and upturned bins. But does it help me write? Not remotely. On the way in, I need as much stimulation as possible so that my brain will fizz with inspiration. On the return trip, I need other kinds of interest – food, chat, modest presents – to reward myself for trudging back. “One of the secrets of a happy life is continuous small treats,” wrote Iris Murdoch; she is my novelist-hero for so many reasons (her extraordinary novels, her remarkable cheekbones, her exhausting but impressive sex life), but I think of this quotation every day.

So where are my treats?

In the countryside, spring is fabulous: tender new grass, optimistic blossom, the smell of wind and rivers and soil and emerging life. Even a back garden can offer a blast of freshness and promise: a haze of forget-me-nots and bluebells, the deep-ridged gills of unfurling horse-chestnut leaves, coils of wormcast, dandelions, clematis. But front gardens, the poky kind outside standard city terrace houses, require so much more work to be interesting. There’s little scope for nature: what’s needed is effort. And, while most of us barely notice our own front gardens, I think it’s time the needs of commuters like, well, me, were taken into account.

For a start, there’s nothing to eat. When you’ve tried one pollution-drenched magnolia petal, you’ve tried them all: they’re mildly gingery, as is ginger. I nibble on rosemary flowers; I sample cherry – and plum blossom, for that fleeting arsenic kick. But until the season of crab apples and blackberries, there’s little to live for.

I wouldn’t mind chat. Horticultural chat, in its place – precisely when I’m ready for it, no small talk, easy escape – would be great. But for that I need the cottage gardens of yesteryear: hollyhocks and foxgloves, a merrie olde apple tree, a row of cabbages tended by a kindly old dustman willing to exchange gooseberry lore. Failing that, anyone watering their containers will do, but that’s the problem: they don’t do it. So who am I meant to talk to on my way home? There’s one fantastic nearby front garden, but I’ve already grilled both owners about their tall, greyish acacia, the creamy-yellow Trachelospermum jasminoides, the drought-tolerant eucalyptus, the fennel, the honeysuckle and the achillea, all in pots on big, loose cobbles. And I don’t want to scare them.

By the time I’ve passed Snipz hair salon and the dubious dentist, I’m on the increasingly dismal home stretch: iron railings dented by joyriders, rotten tree stump. My own flat is round the corner from a little lane; you’d think there would be more front-garden potential here, but every day they disappoint.

The first has promise: a climbing hydrangea (which shows commitment), purple tulips, an acer. But despite passing it twice a day, I’ve never once seen anyone in it. Damn low-maintenance gardens. I’m a high-maintenance bystander and I need interaction. Although not from the next garden, which is a dystopia of rusted clothes-drying racks, brutally strimmed buddleia and a mysteriously permanent skip. One along has a hosepipe, and vines around the front door, but is barricaded behind a 15ft yew hedge, which immediately makes me want to break in.

The next boasts a camellia with ever-rotting flowers in that disgusting shade of watery crimson. Its neighbour has those lockable barriers protecting its Renault Twingo. I want number 27’s lavender bushes, the hardiest I’ve ever seen, but there are swords displayed on the living room wall; 29, a wasteland of artificial turf and Portuguese spotted laurel – an inexcusable shrub – might as well have a sign up saying I HATE LIFE. Beside it, painted an unforgivably liverish terracotta, is a pretty brick house with two savagely mown landing strips of turf, decorative leaf-patterned breeze-blocks and a pond, definitely for murder. And then what’s this expanse of inadequate gravel and broken crazy paving half-smothered under mauve periwinkle, bristly green alkanet and the chip cartons shed by schoolchildren waiting for the bus? Who would live in such dismal squ... Welcome home.