WHAT A STATE! Your garden is a shambles. Winter may not have done it any favours, but that doesn’t excuse the poor use of sunny areas, the dog’s dinner of a layout and your undignified display of weakness in front of your neighbour.

You’re at a loss as to where to start. You’re embarrassed to ask friends or family, and too poor to seek professional assistance. My god, you’re pathetic. You’re probably even thinking about crawling to said neighbour for advice. People like you make me sick.

However, all is not lost. For those of you that still have an ounce of self-respect, I have identified three key areas to help put you back on an even keel with those artless pigs next door.

Make space

Space is always at a premium, so it is important to make your garden look as large as possible. For example, mirrors can be used to create distance by bouncing light into otherwise shady areas. Another way of making space is to divide up the garden using arches and low hedges. Alternatively, extensive tunnelling using heavy plant can create ample storage beneath your neighbour’s land.

Problem layouts

Is it a question of visual interest? Without a decent focal point, your garden will be as dull as the working classes. Features should be in proportion with both the property and one another. In line with their provincial cretinism, your neighbour probably has a sundial, a pond, and god forbid, a couple of ironic gnomes. Your designs should be much grander – consider, for example, Vikram Ramana’s magnificent folly at Hampton Court. A windmill may be considered a good starting point, although a fully operational lighthouse provides the perfect way to break up the horizon with an appropriately phallic edifice.

Perhaps your beds are disparate and random, or there is a general lack of harmony in the garden? Look no further than Narcissus pseudonarcissus, the horticultural panacea. Ask any professional gardener and they’ll tell you the same: plough up everything and plant daffodils. For six to eight weeks each year, your garden will be a sea of yellow. For best results, leave fallow for the other ten months and grow cows. If the nouveau riche scum next door stick in their oar, tell them you’re receiving an EU grant to increase the region’s Kobe steak output. Watch their blood boil and laugh in their face.

Privacy

Fed up with those curtain twitchers next door judging you and your estate? Use judicious tree-planting to rework your boundaries and create a private green oasis. At the same time, upgrade your own observations through the strategic positioning of webcams. This relatively inexpensive equipment is easy to install and maintain, so you will be able to track not only the developments on their land, but also their affairs indoors.

Hopefully, you will find that just a little effort in these key areas will make the world of difference to your property. Do remember, however, that I am not remotely interested in your mediocre lives, so please desist from sending me any further pictures of your amateurish endeavours.