SANDI TOKSVIG is mowing

There’s a growing trend for stealth gardening – and Sandi is proud to be a pioneer. It’s time, she says, to sow the seeds of love. You dig?

The only crime I have ever knowingly committed is that I once illegally mowed a lawn. I realise this is not up there with the great offences of the century, but it was done late at night by moonlight while wearing dark clothing to avoid detection, so it has an air of the felonious.

I had a friend whose apartment overlooked a piece of common land with a pond. At one time, the council cared for this small oasis with care, making sitting beside it a pleasure. Then cuts came to the council budget, leaving cuts to the lawn a thing of the past. The grass grew, weeds took hold and soon only a duck with an unerring ability to land on a sixpence could make use of the water. The once handsome common looked terrible. People stopped using it and litter blew across the abandoned ground.

‘Do you have a lawnmower?’ my friend asked me one day, as she stood at the sink looking out at the common. I did and thought there was no harm in saying so.

‘Is it quiet?’ It’s not a question many people ask. I supposed it was. I had a very small garden and had been delighted to find one of those old hand mowers with a lovely wooden handle and single cylinder blade in a junk shop. It had no engine so, although it was hard work, it emitted only a low purr.

I don’t know how I came to agree to it, but one evening, past midnight, I found myself hauling my lawnmower from my car to the edges of the pond. Silently we mowed and trimmed, and in the morning, I have to say, it did look better. I felt we had done our bit for the community, but my friend was just starting. Soon we were planting daffodil bulbs late at night and throwing bombs of wildflower seeds to scatter in the wind. We were common anarchists, wild with our guerrilla gardening.

The council investigated. Letters were sent to the properties that overlooked the water, but no one knew who had done it or, at least, no one said. I can’t think I’ve ever had more fun. My friend knew about gardening and would talk to me about ranunculus and Bellis perennis, which are simply buttercups and daisies, but how I loved the Latin. The words filled my mouth with pleasure.

So I was appalled when I read some comments by a man called Tim Clapp. Mr Clapp is Head of Range at Kingfisher, the company that owns the DIY chain B&Q. He believes that young people of today are not gardening because they find the language of horticulture too confusing. Included in the list of tricky terms were the words evergreen (a plant that retains its green leaves throughout the year) and annual (a plant that has a life cycle of one year).

Now I know it’s the traditional job of the older generation to decry the ignorance of youth, but here I feel someone may have gone too far. I suspect even a child could cope with those words. Mr Clapp wants to ban other terms, such as deciduous, herbaceous, hardy and even mulch. If he has been correctly reported, then he seems to believe that it is these ‘complex’ terms that are stopping the ipad generation from picking up a trowel.

I think it’s more likely that gardening doesn’t occur to them because so many don’t have gardens. The fact is, gardening is fun and guerrilla gardening is spectacular. There are neglected spaces all over the country that have been improved dramatically by mischievous cultivators. Maybe if the young people understood the rebellious side to gardening, we might lure them in.

I never thought I’d use this column to recommend naughtiness, but pick a sad space – a car park, a wall, a rooftop, a tiny abandoned plot in an urban street – and make some magic.

As for the words? I don’t think one really has a problem with them. Remember, Omnia dicta fortoira si dicta Latina (which translates as ‘everything sounds more impressive when said in Latin’).

Sadly, my friend has Alzheimer’s now. She drifts in and out of the present world, but sometimes I mention mowing in the moonlight and she smiles.

Pick a sad space and make some magic!