Water featured again

Gardening is not a fast process. The soil in our garden is wonderfully rich and plants thrive. That's because my parents, who live next door, have been working on the garden since 1959, carefully composting banana skins and vegetable peelings and putting the resulting compost back into the soil.

But these days people want instant gardens, and television programmes which transform gardens at top speed have not helped. The idea is that a garden is an outdoor room: garden centres reflect this. They are full of outdoor tables and chairs, barbecues, pot-bellied stoves, gnomes, statues - - oh yes. And water features.

Now, I think it's a good idea to have a pond in the garden. Water is pleasing to look at, good for the local wildlife, and you can rear tadpoles in it - yes, I know this is a minor obsession of mine and I don't care. Some people like to have goldfish and this is fine if you can be bothered cleaning it out all the time (goldfish are very messy and will rip out any water plants). Goldfish are also well liked by any local herons, who view them as a handy lunch item.

Pond, yes. And have a little fountain or running stream if you like that sort of thing. But the current vogue is not for ponds. It's for water features, and water features tend to look a bit like this:

Two cute little artificial red squirrels which are fine if you like that sort of thing (and I don't).

But it's no use to wildlife. There's nowhere for birds to perch: the sides are too steep and the water's too deep for birds to bathe: the pond is too high and the flow is too fast for frog spawn.

To me, one of the major reasons for having a garden is to attract wildlife. As I write this I can see two sparrows feeding a fledgling on the bird table - the baby shivers its wings and opens its beak and the parents put some food in. I like watching that kind of thing.

If people want their Greek-style statues or their cutesy little plaster animals they can have them if that's what floats their boat, but living creatures are far more interesting. So, if people must have water features they should be ones that can double as birdbaths.

Or, better still, buy a simple birdbath (mine cost £16.00) and you can buy a heck of a lot of bird food with the change from the £79.99 which this water feature costs. And as a bonus, you don't have to look at the nasty fake squirrels.