'Perennials are the ones that grow like weeds, biennials are the ones that die this year instead of next, and hardy annuals are the ones that never come up at all.' - Katherine Whitehorn.

The characteristic that most defines the English is gardening. Show them a patch of earth and they see Eden. I wish I had thought to start a garden centre.

They are places where customers become hysterical and will buy absolutely anything. Perhaps these wild-eyed people are escaping from home where children of all ages are Revising.

This, like gardening, is a national obsession. As soon as a child is five it starts Revising. The very little that it has learnt has to be revisited, memorised, stripped of all pleasure, and tested. By the time the child is seven it is bitter and resentful.

Parents have colour-coded charts, twenty minutes of French, ten of verbal maths. The battle between child and parent is ingrained early now. Let them fail, I cry.

Let freedom of choice be the lesson of the day. Whatever you choose to do, child, you can take the credit for. Meanwhile, with my new garden my car cannot pass a garden centre.

I will be seduced into buying a topiary squirrel (though mine, after over-enthusiastic pruning, looks more like a well-endowed teddy), plants fresh out of the hothouse that die at the sight of rain or cold, and a ridiculous sign saying 'gardeners do it best'. But there is something magical about a garden.

Not a lot compares with the excitement of the first rose on a newly planted shrub. I met David Austin Jnr. at Chelsea and thanked him for that moment. He seemed pleased. Every year I say the same thing about Chelsea. It was the best ever.

And, if you have never been, please don't confuse the television coverage with the real thing. There have been times I have been and then watched the evening show and would say they simply weren't the same event. As soon as you see the first garden you know what you are getting.

This year it was an emphasis on green in all its shades with touches of blue and white. The worst was the Marks and Spencer stand which looked just like a Marks and Spencer store, which should be no surprise, and owed nothing to subtlety or good taste.

The best? Our local florist, Hannah Lee's brilliant floral headpiece, of course. Perfection is the name of Chelsea. A weed cannot be a weed when it is cultivated and planted with precision, artless cannot be artless when it is anguished over.

I go to private gardens opened under the brilliant Garden Open Scheme. The most successful, to my eye, are those which are loved. I don't want anything explained to me now, whether it be a plate of food, a picture, or a stretch of lawn with a marble seat.

It must be personal to the creator. Cleeve West's garden wins for me. That man has a soul.

Lesley Brian