It's a nail in London's coffin when gardens are covered over - The Guardian

For the last six months the house opposite mine has been in the process of "renovation". This means that, apart from its Victorian facade, every aspect has been "modernised" into a state of gleaming sterility. The finishing touches are being done now. The back garden is being concreted and the front garden covered with what looks like black bathroom tiles. Not an inch of ground has been left visible, let alone a hedge – indeed that was the first thing to go when the builders moved in. The developer is strolling about looking satisfied and the estate agent is in tow composing the brochure. But what he will doubtless describe as "finished to exacting standards", I prefer to describe as another nail in the coffin of London's environment.

The London streets I grew up in were very different from the sterile places they are fast becoming. The housing stock certainly needed improving, but the environment was a lot healthier. Then, most terraced houses had hedges – often home to groups of noisy sparrows – while extensive planting of even the smallest front gardens softened the look of streets, making them green corridors.

Now the tiles are going down faster than mahjong pieces and London's greenery is being replaced by hard surfaces and metal fences. These new "easily managed amenity spaces" banish all signs of nature, except perhaps a lonely bay tree in a pot standing guard over a row of dustbins.

This transformation isn't just ugly, it has real environmental consequences. Last week it was revealed that British moths are in "calamitous decline" in the south, mainly due to urbanisation and loss of habitat. Simultaneously, the Commons environment, food and rural affairs committee criticised the government for not doing enough to prevent flooding caused by surface water, including the failure to introduce measures like stopping people laying impermeable surfaces in back gardens and businesses.

A recent report, London: Garden City?, by the London Wildlife Trust compared aerial photographs from 1998-89 and 2006-07, showing that, in those eight years, 3,000 hectares of private domestic gardens was concreted or decked – the equivalent of losing two and a half Hyde Parks a year. It's the suburban equivalent of the destruction of the rainforest. "The loss was much more dramatic than we had imagined," says Matthew Frith, deputy chief executive of London Wildlife Trust. "Trees have disappeared, lawns had been knocked back by decking or lost under sheds, and paving is taking over." Neglected by planning regulations, this move away from traditional gardens is creating a huge change in London's landscape and ecology .

Urban gardens are incredibly important ecologically. They provide homes and food for insects like butterflies and moths; they give shelter for amphibians like frogs and newts; and they often provide a habitat for birds. Bees, a crucial species now in crisis, often find richer environments in urban gardens than the countryside. Traditional urban gardens have a variety of flowers for longer periods unlike the countryside where a species like rape might dominate at a particular time of year.

Some rare species have their last stronghold in urban gardens. The stag beetle is thought to mainly survive in urban back gardens in south-west London. This species is completely reliant on piles of rotting wood. But of course that's the first thing to go in a garden makeover. More nebulously, but possibly equally important, gardens give urban children their only sustained chance to grub in the dust and find and examine creatures.

Some blame this mania for paving on the spread of parking zones, driving householders to turn their front gardens into parking lots. But the fashion for hard surfaces and concept gardens is not just about cars. In my area, front gardens are too small even for the smallest car. These trends owe more to changes of taste and lifestyle. Like the mania for modernised interiors, gardens too have fallen under the spell of minimalism dominated by gravel, shaped olive trees in pots, and the ubiquitous tiles and decking.

The London Wildlife Trust report blames the legacy of programmes such as Ground Force, with its quick-fix, garden makeover philosophy. The BBC vigorously denies it promotes ecologically damaging practices, pointing to other programmes encouraging wildlife-friendly gardening. But it's hard to take such objections seriously. Who could ever forget poor Nelson Mandela's face confronted with Ground Force's makeover of his garden? A man known for his tact and diplomacy, not easily lost for words, the best he could muster by way of enthusiasm was to tell Charlie Dimmock she looked like a Spice Girl while gently chiding: "We're not meant to have secrets."

Even after the property crash, the ethos of the "quick makeover" dominates property programmes, pushing the idea that the more radical the redesign of your home – usually towards "minimalist sleek" – the more it is worth. Gardens are carried along in this – with developers ripping up lawns and bushes in favour of "designed spaces" and "outside" rooms – where the emphasis is on garden furniture and flooring surfaces. These spaces are always presented as "easy maintenance" – the holy grail of the contemporary homeowner. According to a recent report by B&Q, more than half of those under the age of 35 know nothing about DIY, nor would they contemplate spending their leisure doing the simplest maintenance tasks like cutting hedges or grass, even though this same generation willingly pays to work up a sweat in the gym.

The styles people choose inside their own houses is their affair but maybe there's a case for beginning to see gardens as part of a wider environment, because these small individual changes add up to major changes in our public environment – affecting us all. Every individual who rips up a hedge or lawn contributes to the decline in species able to survive in towns. Everyone who paves or tiles their garden lessens the amount of ground available that can absorb water and help prevent flash flooding. Maybe we need a change in attitude that might lead to councils taking a tougher line on the loss of gardens.

The irony though is that these sterilised, low-maintenance designs do not deliver what they promise. After a few months, the gloss wears off the tiles. Gradually, the householder realises there's nowhere to hide the dustbins that now dominate the scene, dwarfing the parched and dying potted bay tree. Up come the weeds through the gravel, and the slate chips. Now they'll have to get someone in to tidy up.

When you declare war on nature it's not a brief campaign, but a lifetime commitment. Meanwhile the last remaining traditional gardens will continue to bloom, providing a haven for the last remaining bugs and birds. And in among a profusion of hedges, roses and riotous flower boxes, no one notices a dustbin.