Just as a weed has been called a flower whose virtues have not yet been discovered, so a front garden is - far too often - a plot whose virtues as a parking lot have not yet been realised. The Royal Horticultural Society is so alarmed by the rate at which gardens are vanishing under asphalt that it is holding a front garden competition class at this year's Chelsea Flower Show. The RHS worries that disappearing front gardens are not only robbing plants and wildlife of their habitats, but also causing, or worsening, flooding: front lawns serve as a sponge for rainwater, which now flows on to the street and into antique sewerage pipes instead.

But it is not just that there are better places to berth your car overnight, or that gardens offer flecks of colour and gaiety in the redbrick jigsaw of the suburbs; it is that a front garden is a window onto a human soul. Shaw wrote in Pygmalion that it is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman despise him. It's the same with gardens. A glimpse of gladioli makes some swoon, and others sneer. We gauge our neighbours as sternly by their taste in perennials as we do by the way they dress, or the scent they wear, or the kind of music that seeps through the party wall.

Your spirit willing to heed the RHS's call, but flesh weak owing to lack of inspiration? Why not experiment with a new themed garden. Perhaps:

The Gordon Brown Garden: create a horseshoe-shaped gravel area in the centre of the garden where Gordon Brown can practice U-turns.

The Barack Obama Garden: features a strain of Dianthus barbatus known as “Sweetie” William.

The John Edwards Garden: uses a weather-dependent approach whereby you plant only when you are certain which way the wind is blowing.

The Plutocrat's Garden: gone is the show-off Renaissance statuary, now replaced by neat rows of eye-wateringly expensive drums of crude oil.

The Angelina Jolie Garden: leave your garden so neglected and undernourished that Angelina and Brad decide to adopt it and plant it for you!