As a natural gardener I’ve seen a terrific pendulum swing in gardening since I started writing 15 years ago. Then I was considered very odd. A woman who gardened without chemical props (like slug bait and insecticides) just had to be weird. But it wasn’t an attempt to steal the high moral ground; it was purely circumstance. I started gardening in the 1950s, an era when chemicals were not yet used in gardens, and my Yorkshire streak of thrift made me a wary shopper. Finally, my years in vegetable research brought me into contact with a plethora of fungicides and insecticides on a daily basis. So I shunned their use in my own garden just to get away from them.

But the real impetus was feeding a growing family on a shoestring budget. I used my garden as a larder and I simply didn’t want to put a chemically-enhanced raspberry into my baby’s mouth. So I carried on being a natural gardening maverick and my gardens have flourished and prospered ever since and I haven’t been overrun by Biblical plagues.

Now green gardening is everywhere and it’s become the province of the television celebrity. Cooks Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall have enthused a new generation of gardener-cooks and I applaud them both. But perhaps as a result of growing your own, gardening has become associated with saving the planet as well. I applaud this stance, too, because gardens are vital green spaces. But recently the green movement seems to have careered through the stratosphere and the target audience seems to be young children.

A recent phone call from a breathless PR girl based in London explained to me that if a child could spend 42 minutes growing something to eat they would help to save the planet. I imagined my children bounding home from school with seed packets in hand, clutching the message of saving the planet.

So I would like to remind grown ups and PR girls everywhere that growing plants is a magical experience that involves the creation. It is not to be boxed up in key stages and SATS by the nanny state, or written about in ‘dig a hole and plant it’ terms. It involves the wonder of watching a tiny speck of poppy seed turn into a fully petalled flower. It revolves around eating the cress you have grown yourself, or picking the sun-warmed strawberry before the blackbird gets it. It is a sensuous affair and science is only part of the process.

So conjure up some magic of your own and sow some pumpkin or bean seeds with a child if you can. But please don’t mention saving the planet. Save that one for the politicians.

n Readers of Gardeners’ World magazine have voted Waterperry Gardens their favourite garden in the South East region in the 2-for-1 entry scheme.

The National Trust will be giving away 170 million free seeds in the May half-term holiday as part of their Food Glorious Food campaign designed to encourage children and their parents to start growing their own food at home.