How to be 6 per cent happier by next weekend without winning lotto

If you'd asked me when I was 10 I'd have said it's a form of child labour, supposedly outlawed except in our backyards. Gardening meant holding the hose over the strawberries while Dad swore at the lawn mower.

At 25 I'd have said "nope" and kept on shovelling manure. I loved growing fruit and vegetables, and recording which predators ate which pests and did basil really love tomatoes? I didn't love selling the fruit and vegetables, nor did I have a flower garden.

I was 35 before I grew my first petunia.

By then I did have a few ornamentals. Blame my "neighbours" Jean and Angela. Jean was 50 years older than me and lived two kilometres down the road. She gave me seeds and cuttings, and woe betide me if they weren't planted when she next came to visit. Angela lived five kilometres over mountain and bush and had aphids in her hair the first time I visited. She loves - and understands - roses, callistemons, banksia et al.

But I had the local bush flowers, hillsides flaming with hardenbergia, trees drenched in wonga blossom and clematis, the honey scent of bursaria in mid summer, golden everlastings that faded to parchment, great swathes of rock orchids and tiny grass ones. Why did I need zinnias?

Then The Women's Weekly came to interview me about my books. The next day their gardening writer sudden retired, due to illness. My garden had looked glorious - Jean's doing, and Angela's - I had written books on pest and weed control. Would I fill in?

I didn't tell them that the flowers grew themselves and that I didn't know a zinnia from a zebra. Decades later I am still writing about gardening. I've learned that spreading petunias keep spreading as long as they get tucker, water and warmth, and that native blooms like callistemons produce more flowers that last longer if the bushes are pruned.

Gardening made me happy. It still does.

Since then I've spent years persuading people that humans are happier with greenery around them, quoting study after study, so go out and plant! This meant it was disconcerting to read in last week's New Scientist that yes, greenery makes people happy - it rates a two out of a hundred on the "happiness index". Seeing or hearing flowing water (the outdoor kind, not the bathtub overflowing) gives you a four. Place a bird pond or small fountain in your garden and you may get a six - if you are paying attention.

The quoted studies are just from being with greenery or water. They didn't count the sight of parrots splashing in the bird bath, or the frog sitting on the window at night, gulping down the insects attracted to my reading light, nor the taste of corn just plucked from the garden or the triumph of getting it there. There was no mention of the awe in a child's voice: "Mum, are those oranges on that tree?"

So, based on current knowledge:

To be 2 per cent happier, plant greenery around you, be it in the soil or in a pot.

To be 4 per cent happier, add a bird bath and/or a fountain.

To be x% happier, let a kid pick your lemons and feed them strawberries warm from the sun.

To be y% happier, give bunches of blooms, basil, ripe tomatoes and baskets of fruit to all who'd love them.

X and Y depend on the person. I am 95 per cent unhappier away from the bush and my garden.

If gardening doesn't give you more than 2 per cent of joy, don't do it. But do add greenery to your life, and to others', even if you need to pay someone to plant the "never say die" kinds of trees and shrubs that will shield you from traffic noise, attract birds, and maybe, when you least expect it, provide you with apples. Don't forget to add that extra 4 per cent by adding a fountain or bird bath. Or perhaps just make time each day to wander along the lakeside, and listen to the water rats splash.