There are people who can garden and people who can’t... and I certainly know which camp I’m in!

THERE is a teak pavilion on stilts floating over a pond filled with koi. There are hand-carved couches piled high with cushions in vivid shades of mint and saffron, tempered with others in cinnamon and ochre.

There is a ceiling fan made from banana leaves that are woven into giant slats and they move together and draw apart like clapping hands. In a corner, there is a basket filled with ice, and peeping out of it, like meerkats from a burrow, are the long necks of cold bottles of lager.

It is a vision of perfect relaxation and, in my mind, this is how my back garden looks, an exotic albeit miniature version of Bali. Sadly, when I look out the window, what I actually see is Ballymun just after they blew up the flats.

Honestly, and there is no point pretending otherwise, my garden is a disgrace. When the house was built, in 2004, it was, like everything else in the bubble years, thrown up in about 20 minutes. Two of the light switches work counter-intuitively – you switch them up for on and down for off. When the door of the bathroom is fully open, it extends through the frame of the door to the master bedroom. There isn’t enough room in the en-suite to swing a kitten, never mind a full-size cat – and, maybe worst of all, when the garden was covered with topsoil, they appear to have brought it in from Allenwood.

Defiance

In short, it’s a bog, not just marshy underfoot but marshy in every way. Two minutes after you cut the grass, the first of the bulrushes, or something very like them, reappears, to be followed by dozens of others. Having merely bowed to the mower rather than standing up to be clipped, they regroup in taunting clusters of defiance. If you’ve ever seen a bunch of chives, multiply it in height by about ten and in number by about 100, and you get the picture.

That’s how it looks when it’s relatively tidy. When it’s not, it’s a meadow. I live very close to the sea and the growing season seems to be a short one.

A good cut (I’m talking the sort you get on admission to the US Marines) in early October lasts until late March or early April, depending on how mild the weather is, but when growth restarts, it does so with rather more enthusiasm than is healthy.

I mowed it about three weeks ago and, when I left for a holiday in Ibiza last Saturday week, it still looked tidy, if not necessarily entirely neat.

What I hadn’t banked on was the good weather I missed, because when I got home last weekend, the sunshine had created a sudden spurt that turned it into a meadow. I had to look up these names because I had no idea what specific weeds I seem so adept at cultivating and, among others, I have charlock and chickweed, broadleaf plantain and flowering clover, buttercups and dock leaves. I am, it transpires, the Diarmuid Gavin of the desperate. I don’t need Roundup: I need sheep.

As I write this, I’m looking out the window at a post-apocalyptic scene that reminds me of Manhattan reclaimed by nature in I Am Legend.

The ‘grass’ – I’m being kind – is at least 30 centimetres high. Somewhere in the middle of it is a 35-quid fire pit I purchased in Aldi on a whim, and I know it’s there only because, though black when bought, it now is a vivid shade of rusty orange.

There are two PVC garden chairs pockmarked with mildew stains, and cushions that have grown to twice their size because they’re supersaturated with the remnants of every shower that has blown through since I got home.

Problem

The washing-line pole that is supposed to raise my clothes to the sun like an Aztec sacrifice instead leans limp and beaten, like an ageing prizefighter holding himself up on the ropes by a single armpit. The fence and shed haven’t been stained in years, so individual slats look like a grey-haired parting on a brunette who can’t find the Garnier Nutrisse.

The biggest problem of all is that there’s no point really in trying to do any better. My next-door neighbours had their garden landscaped when they bought the house and it has matured into almost a scaled-down model of Powerscourt.

It has tall, medium and small plants and shrubs that complement each other like gin and tonic. There’s a gravel pathway edged with glorious sandstone rocks. Their timber deck, lovingly tended to, sits under a gaily coloured awning that extends on telescopic arms to almost cover the full area. It is a terrifying yardstick by which to measure oneself.

They must occasionally look over the fence and pray the wind blows the opposite direction, lest the seeds from my weeds invade like a marauding gang and destroy everything they’ve worked for.

At least my front garden is well kept; I live on an estate with no walls, and we collectively pay a man with a ride-on mower to keep the front gardens and the common areas tidy. Otherwise, I’d hardly be able to park the car.

I’d love to be less lethargic about it all, but I don’t know where to start. Indoors, I’m the Hannibal Lecter of houseplants; I’ve killed so many, I just stopped buying them. Even a pot of basil or mint from Tesco seems to take one look and me and spontaneously abandon the will to live. It’s like, instead of having green fingers, I have gangrene fingers that turn everything they touch equally septic.

Patience

I’ve tried planning a proper garden before, but I had no patience, and filled in every available space with fresh planting, entirely forgetting that they sprout and spread.

Recently I passed by a house that I used to live in, and the hebes I put down two decades ago, when they looked delightfully ornamental, are now six feet tall and frankly look like triffids.

I’m envious of all of you who will go to Bloom this weekend and return home inspired. I would leave in tears.

You will perform similar magic in your own gardens, the outdoor rooms where you will spend most of the summer with your feet up as the Robomow does all the work for you; if I bought one of those, it would need a front and rear gunner and possibly the assistance of a drone to take out the bigger weeds.

For the past five weeks, I’ve been desperately jealous of the people whose lives are transformed on RTÉ’s Super Garden. Designers I can describe only as angels kiss new life into soil, part weeds like Moses parted the sea, and bring tranquility to chaos.

You probably think I’ll end this by vowing to get stuck in myself this weekend, to start the long process of reclaiming the nuclear wasteland, to head to Woodie’s to buy trellis and clematis and a pergola, but I won’t. I have to accept there are people who can garden and people who can’t.

So, this bank holiday weekend, there will be no teak pavilion, no pond, no fan. Indeed, the only part of my fantasy garden I can guarantee will make an appearance is the bucket of ice studded with bottles of beer, though very likely indoors.

And definitely with the curtains closed. Sure looking out at that would depress anyone…