A 'garden statement' is anything that attracts and holds the gaze. It's remarkably easy to install something so noteworthy that few people will bother to look any further.

One of my favorite gardens simply has a tiny row of pansies by the front gate, and potted pansies by the front door, alternating with bright dwarf marigolds in summer. I can't remember what's in the rest of the garden, even though I see it often. A bit of lawn and a hedge or two, maybe? It doesn't matter. Those bright flowers make the statement: someone lives here who loves her neighbors enough to make a joyous garden.

When we held Open Garden days here we timed them for the Climbing Albertine's blooming, one single rambling rose bush covering the front fence with massed pink blooms. I doubt any of those who photographed it ever realised the garden on either side of that rose was a bit ... tatty. Plant half your fences out with rambling roses, the rampant kind that need no pruning till they begin to block the front door, and your garden will look stunning for as long as they are flowering, which with modern varieties can be at least six months. Plant the other half of your fence space with winter blooming hardenbergia, and you'll be spectacular almost the entire year.

One extremely boring terrace house in Adelaide has six identical standard Iceberg roses side by side in its tiny front garden. Standard Iceberg roses are the bath salts of the rose world, but those six, in that spot, in that garden, make a drab scene superb, especially as Iceberg roses are almost constantly in bloom if grown next to the warmth of a sunny wall. Standard roses are grafted on top of an extremely tall bare stem. They can look like a row of skinny bare legs topped with frilly petticoats, or they can look magnificent, depending on how they're used.

Weeping flowering fruit trees look similarly dramatic. A weeping flowering cherry in the middle of your lawn will make your garden seem spectacularly floriferous for as long as it blooms, which may only be a few weeks in a spring heat wave. A weeping standard Bonica rose is a better bet for a mid-lawn ornament, or anything that says 'long blooming' on the label.

This is the time of year to give yourself a hedge of apple trees to espalier along the fence; or a hedge of camellias instead of a fence. Camellias are a gift to the next generations, too, as they will eventually become small trees with sturdy trunks, rather than bushes. Three giant camellias, at least 100 years old, turn an otherwise bare farmhouse garden nearby into a delight in winter, and a single vast camellia in a courtyard in a Melbourne university is unforgettable. At least the courtyard and its giant flower-covered camellia tree are unforgettable. I can't remember which university is lucky enough to possess it.

Spend the next 20 years creating topiary horses either side of your front gate, or buy two large pots of already topiaried box or lillypilly. Go 'too big to be ignored' with a summer blooming magnolia grandiflora, or some of the winter flowering mahonias, drought resistant, fragrant and generous.

A garden statement doesn't even have to be a plant. I visited a house in Perth a few years ago, built in true Perth neo massive style, all slabs of mauve concrete. But all along the blank front wall were extremely tall black pots, starkly elegant, filled with the most sculpturally stunning yucca rigida I have ever seen. I remained bowled over by their sheer architectural poise even after discovering that the yucca were made of something that wasn't quite plastic, but was definitely not plant.

Another garden I love has a drift of ornamental pebbles by the front door, with a stream meandering through it, though instead of water there are soft blue low-growing succulents, 'hen and chickens' I think, which are cheap to buy and reproduce themselves so quickly that a scant planting soon becomes thick with a bit of watering, though they will survive heat and drought for quite a while without it.

A 'statement' can be a front path or paved courtyard in varying subtle shades of slate. Everything else will just look vaguely green while you admire it. It can be a water feature, a gift for the birds as well as passersby, or a sculpture large enough to admire from the front fence.

And of course, you can simply use a heck of a lot of money. The Great Homes of England (think Pemberley) made their statement with 200 hectares of lawn: look, we are rich enough to have a vast amount of grass with no sheep to spoil the view. Or do a Prince Charles and buy 20,000 lawn thyme plants. (Those who hear a note of envy in that last suggestion are correct).

Whatever you choose for your garden statement will, of course, tell the discerning passerby a surprising amount about you, if they stop to analyse it. Hopefully they will be too busy admiring your garden to bother.