Confessions of a lawn obsessive

For the past few days I’ve been frantically watering my lawn in anticipation of the London hosepipe ban. True, there are other things in the garden that need watering – the roses, the magnolias, the rhododendrons, as well as the tomato plants, the rosemary bushes and the olive tree. But I can probably manage to get round them with my watering can once the ban kicks in and in any case it’s the lawn that’s my pride and joy. Gazing at the stripes after it’s just been mown is one of life’s great pleasures as I settle into late middle age.

When Caroline and I first looked round our house in Acton as prospective buyers, the lawn, measuring about 45 feet by 30, was a selling point, but only as a space for our three boys to play in. That was 15 years ago and now if any of them venture into the garden with a football I come charging out of my shed and tell them to go back to their PlayStations. Don’t they realise that a sliding tackle could do serious damage – not to each other, obviously, but to the turf? I think back to the days when there was a whacking great trampoline in the bottom left-hand corner and shudder.

I can’t quite pinpoint when I became a lawn obsessive. Was it when we got our first dog about five years ago? Having to pick up the poos of our Hungarian vizsla – long since rehoused, thank God – meant I spent quite a lot of time rooting around in the grass and began to notice how wild and unkempt it was after years of neglect. During the brief interlude between Leo’s departure and the arrival of Mali, our more manageable cavapoochon, I pulled up the thistles and scattered grass seed everywhere and succeeded in getting it under control. Now, after several years of tender stewardship, it could almost be a putting green.

On the other hand, it might just be contrariness. My interest in this little patch of grass has blossomed just as lawns in general have fallen out of fashion. The more synonymous they’ve become with a certain type of toxic masculinity – suburban, repressed, unnatural – the more I’ve come to love them. Paradoxically, watering your lawn every day is about the most un-green thing you can do, even before the drought. It’s the gardening equivalent of driving a Chelsea tractor or refusing to recycle. This lovingly cultivated corner of East Acton is my own private protest against net zero.

So I’m deeply concerned about the hosepipe ban. If you’re caught using a hose you can be fined £1,000. Would my neighbours report me to the authorities? I know from talking to the Conservative candidates on the doorstep during council elections that my street has more Tory voters than almost any other in the borough, but it only takes one spiteful greenie to dob me in to the local Stasi. Indeed, one of my Conservative-voting neighbours might do it out of lawn envy. I know from peeking over fences and down side returns that I’ve been more conscientious about watering mine than most of the surrounding householders. In a couple of weeks, these slugabeds can tell themselves the only reason my lawn is lush and vibrant and theirs are dead and brown is because I’ve been flouting the ban.

I will probably have to bite the bullet and hang up the hose. The frustrating thing about this is that Caroline has just bought me a fantastic new toy – a Bosch leaf hoover. After years of watching me painstakingly pick up the leaves scattered across the lawn every morning, bent double like a little old lady, she decided to get me one of these miraculous machines. Now, instead of constantly having to stoop, I strap this contraption to myself, plug it into the mains and sweep the giant nozzle back and forth across the grass, like a metal detectorist. The upshot is that the lawn is now completely spotless, like the baize on a snooker table. It’s never looked better, so the prospect of it turning brown is particularly grim.

I shall have to take comfort from the fact that lawns are extremely resilient – the reason we’re supposed to not waste water on them even when hosepipes aren’t verboten. A week of rain, I’m told, and it will be as good as new. But is that really true? And what if one of my wretched teenage children tosses a cigarette butt on to the dry, parched grass? It might go up like a tinder box and take my shed with it. The idea of having to start again from scratch – and rebuild my outside office – is too depressing. I may have to resort to spending several hours each evening going from side to side with a watering can. Let’s hope the ban doesn’t last too long.