Giving way to a territorial robin is one of the joys of my garden

Acouple of years ago, for reasons that can be summarised as Life Getting in the Way of Gardening, I began to neglect the little plots of land at the front and back of my house. By the time my gardening mojo returned, they were so overgrown as to be almost impenetrable: a couple of seasons’ neglect had produced a pocket version of the Lost Gardens of Heligan.

The good thing about a very small urban garden is that quite perfunctory effort can produce remarkable results. A pruning saw, a stout pair of gardening gloves and a few lacerating afternoons of stuffing prickly trimmings into the recycling bin rendered the place almost recognisable as a garden again. A few months on, it is a riot of roses, jasmine, honeysuckle and foxgloves, aquilegia and Welsh poppies. If you half-closed your eyes you could almost mistake it for one of those artfully negligent cottage gardens that are perennial crowdpleasers at the Chelsea Flower Show, which opens tomorrow.

While the Chelsea gardeners fret over the difficulty of forcing their flowers into simultaneous bloom for showtime, I face a different gardening conundrum. A robin has built its nest in the honeysuckle, and it has strong views about which of us owns the space. If I go out to sniff the amazing scent of the first opening buds of the “Souvenir du Docteur Jamain” rose, the robin zooms out of the undergrowth and ushers me firmly back indoors. The thought that I might be responsible for a clutch of addled eggs is too awful to contemplate, so I find myself temporarily banished from my own garden by this feathered matriarch.

But gardening, I remind myself, is not just about plants. A resident robin, even a fiercely territorial one, is part of the unfolding drama that begins as soon as you sow a seed, or rescue an ailing lupin from the shelves of sickly seedlings marked down to £1 at the B&Q garden centre. Chelsea may represent the pinnacle of horticultural grandeur, but its show gardens, fragrant with cottage garden favourites, exuberant with species (cow parsley, buttercups, fescues) that in other contexts would be considered weeds, celebrate the peculiarly inclusive traditions of British gardening. From now until harvest festival, towns and villages across the country will be holding their own mini-chelseas – garden shows and fêtes where homegrown roses, sweet peas and spuds compete for the coveted title of Best in Show.

Gardening is about creating beauty, and the practical pleasure of eating what you have grown, but there is more to it than that. Some years ago, research published in the journal Neuroscience found that “friendly” bacteria found in soil acted on the brain in a way similar to antidepressants. “These studies... leave us wondering whether we shouldn’t all be spending more time playing in the dirt,” said Dr Chris Lowry, the report’s lead author. One of this year’s Chelsea gardens, sponsored by the mental health charity Youngminds, is designed to show how gardening can offer young people a refuge from the frantic world of social media. In a popularity contest between Mortal Kombat X and an epic battle with aphids, you wouldn’t necessarily put your money on the aphids. Still, throw in a scary robin with mindcontrol powers, and you might be on to something.