“Pottering,” says garden writer Mirabel Osler, “is a misunderstood minor art, generating its own form of lonely wellbeing.” It is also, I think, a female occupation. “Men have a more definite end in view,” observed the editor of The Englishman’s Garden. “Historically, men have done the initial planning and layout of gardens. Women cosset and fuss over plants as though they were deeply loved children.” It’s the nurturing instinct that draws many women to making their first garden. If they have children, though, they become consumed in the business of bringing them up. When the children leave, the garden beckons again, and the woman has more patience for it.

Men own up to their nurturing side, too: “Gardening is, apart from having children, the most rewarding thing in life,” says Alan Titchmarsh. The garden historian Todd Longstaffe-Gowan agrees: “Nurturing is a fundamental human need and plants are wonderfully co-operative in that way – everything happens so quickly, whereas children take so much longer!” Gowan has a marvellously floriferous garden at his house on London’s Mile End Road, full of myrtle, roses, echiums. But for the more pragmatic man, nurturing is often restricted to the vegetable bed or allotment. “If you can’t eat it, what’s the point?” asked one. I wondered if this was a generalisation applicable to older males; perhaps the new man has got in touch with his female side and discovered flowers. But when I consulted my children they cited four male friends in their twenties devoted to their allotments.

The garden writer and designer Mary Keen has made gardens in various homes with her husband Charlie. “He’s always done the vegetables. We don’t have a vegetable garden now, but we have a little wood and Charlie enjoys managing that. He loves the manual labour: I think that’s what men get out of gardening generally.” Such observations are susceptible to objection, but having talked to many gardeners while researching this story, I’ve had several generalisations confirmed: men adore pruning and cutting things down – my own husband was never happier than pulling up a tree, sawing off a branch – they like muck and bonfires and killing things. In other words they like control, and they have a Calvinistic approach to order (Calvin said an ordered garden reflected an ordered soul).

And men are competitive: “I wanted to make the best garden in England,” says Ian Pollard, who with his wife Barbara prefers to garden in the nude at Abbey House in Malmesbury, Wiltshire. Ian, who loves the feeling of the “healing sun on his skin”, has been gardening in the buff since the Sixties, and was joined by Barbara ten years into their relationship. Like most naturists, they feel that we should be comfortable in our nakedness and have even organised “Clothes Optional Days” in their garden.

Tom Fort recognises male competition, too. His brother, the food writer Matthew Fort, will ring up to inquire how his leeks are doing. “He’s gleeful when I tell him they haven’t started and says, ‘Oh, mine germinated days ago.’” Tim Wilmot grows banana trees, bamboo and phormiums in his garden outside Bristol. “I like to succeed with exotic things that other gardeners don’t have,” he says. There are 12 species of palm in Wilmot’s garden, which confirms the male penchant for collecting: Ian Pollard confesses to being a plantaholic. “I collected books when I was young, and stamps. Now it’s plants.”

Tim Wilmot’s jungle-style garden is open to visitors under the National Gardens Scheme and he observes that men respond more warmly to its architectural character. “Men like big, spiky things,” he says, “and things with unusual shapes.” David Gillam, general manager at Alexander Palace Garden Centre, agrees. “Men are more interested in trees and larger plants than in bedding plants or colour schemes. Women think about themes when they’re buying.” With lawn mowers and tools, it’s the person who uses them who does the buying but, Gillam says, with barbecues it’s definitely the men.

All gardeners talk of the pleasure of seasons, anticipation, reverie (“a green thought in a green shade”) and change. “Gardens are the most forgiving areas of life,” says Mirabel Osler. “Relationships cannot be transplanted, intertwined or cut to the ground with the confidence they will sprout again, but gardens can.”

Mary Keen, 66, garden writer and designer; two and a half-acre garden in Gloucestershire

In the early days, gardening was a wonderful creative escape – with four children there wasn’t much else to do. It was 1965, and we were all discussing the awful dilemma – work or children. I was intermittently discontented; my mother-in-law was a painter and she made me see you could do gardening and feel you were doing something creative. I couldn’t write poetry or paint, which I would like to have done, and gardening satisfied my arty side. We moved a lot; one could bury one’s mistakes. I read catalogues and books in the bath and in bed at night – I was quite obsessed.

In summer, my husband Charlie and I would be out in the garden till 9 at night; the children would come out in their nighties and cry, “What are you doing?”

I’m quite bad at plants; my real interest is in atmosphere. I think perfection is very off-putting. People may not admit it or even realise it, but the pull of gardening is that it replicates that reassuring cycle of life and death, life and death. It’s corny, I suppose, but each spring is a resurrection. That saying – you are nearer God’s heart in a garden – is true, I think.

Emma Duncan, 34, solicitor; large garden in rural Norfolk

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