Gardeners’ time is shrinking too. Which do you spend more time on each week? Commuting? Gardening? Standing in the queue at the supermarket?

Smaller gardens also mean less privacy. The remedy, increasingly, is to create a courtyard: a formal walled one, a garden within a garden; an informal ‘garden room’ with hedges or strategically placed shrubs: or turning your entire backyard into a courtyard with high fences or trellises draped with passionfruit, Chinese jasmine or other climbers that are not rampant enough to collapse the fence, like wisteria, or rambling roses.

Roses do make wonderful trellis covers, but go for a vigorous but tameable rose like Mermaid, Souvenir de la Malmaison or Iceberg, rather than a rampant rambler like Climbing Albertine and Dorothy Perkins.

One low-maintenance trick with a courtyard is to ‘‘semi pave’’ it. Work out a pattern where every third or fourth paving stone is left out, then plant the open space with something delightful, hardy and low growing. This gives you greenery and less summer glare; no mowing; minimal weeding, as well as providing a firm surface for feet or furniture that will take far more wear than grass.

The classics for ‘‘between pavers’’ are white alyssum, a fast growing glorious froth that blooms nearly all year round and needs replacing about every 3-4 years; thyme, including the flat thymes like orange peel or caraway thyme; winter savoury; chamomile (though that needs regular water and seems to attract every wind-blown wind seed in the district), golden marjoram, which needs sun and heat to turn its rich yellow; oregano, and many more.

All of those, except the alyssum, are more fragrant when trodden on though even alyssum has a delicious honey fragrance if you are sitting above it. But I have just come across three relatively new plants that I would love to try, even though none of them are scented, but all three are probably more heat and drought and neglect hardy that the ground covers above.

The first is Japanese Blood Grass (look for Imperata cylindrica ‘Rubra’). It’s a small growing grass (it doesn’t need mowing) but is intensely dramatic with blood red leaves that are richly coloured all through summer and autumn, but still ‘red’ the rest of the year. It grows to about 30x30cm so is perfect for a missing paving stone spot, and like most ornamentals, looks best when there is a lot of it. So don’t plant three and expect visors to go ‘‘wow!’’ It’s also incredibly hardy once established. Just water it at least twice a week in its first year, and then whenever you get around to it after that.

The second is good old erigeron, or ‘‘seaside daisy’’, which can become a weed, so grow it in courtyards where it won’t spread into the bush. It blooms all year round, with the major drawback that the flowers are small and often held under the new leaves so they are totally inconspicuous.

But this one looks to be darling: Erigeron glaucus ‘Seabreeze’. It makes a mat of much denser foliage than the old varieties, but best of all, the pinkish daisies sit up well above the leaves. Erigeron thrives in sun and dry spots - though again, ‘water till established’ (I think I need that on a T-shirt.) It also grows about 30x30cm.

The third ‘I wish I could have that’ plant is best for the edges of your courtyard, as you won’t want to step on its perfectly rounded shape. It’s Sedum Thundercloud, 20cm tall by 30cm wide, a bit like a Christmas tree for elves, with blue green leaves and massed white flowers all summer. It adores full sun, plus survives drought beautifully (add T-shirt slogan here again).

We don’t have a courtyard – the wombats would object – and anyway the mountains give us privacy. But I still dream of creating one: a small lily pool with a trickling fountain, a paving pattern both simple and complex, small perfect plants and a small perfect paradise of peace in the clamour of the world.