The City Gardener (C4): The patch of land at the back of Phil's house isn't so much a garden as "a sad space with a lot of potential".

Fortunately, he has a friend called Matt James, who's a horticultural expert and the presenter of one of the programmes on TV's conveyor belt of gardening shows.

The title of this one gives the game away - Matt must transform city plots into something resembling the countryside, or "stunning outdoor room" as he so eloquently termed it.

So, back to Phil's desolate wasteland in Southampton on the south coast. Matt revealed that he knew the place - the city, not Phil's apology for a garden - as he used to live there. "It's quite a gritty and grimy city, but one of the greenest in the UK," he noted.

The bad news was that Phil knew nothing about gardening, something that was evident looking outside the back of his house. There were no shrubs, no plants, no atmosphere. The good news, added Matt, was that there was nothing to clear away.

The two got talking about plans for the space. "What about plants?" asked Matt.

"Yes, I'll have some of those," replied Phil, in the casual way you throw goods in your trolley as you wander the supermarket aisles.

Matt's scheme sounded impressive, notably the "long sexy path". I'm not quite sure how a load of stone slabs can be sexy, but I'm willing to bow to Matt's superior horticultural knowledge.

He also knew a lot about grass, something I thought was there just for cutting. Wrong again. There are lots of grasses - different shapes, forms, structures, colours and even one he described as "a giant whopping great big 'un".

Another of his tips was how to "stress out" a plant, which sounded like a nasty case of plant abuse. But, he explained, you don't shout and call it names, you just don't feed it a lot of water.

Four days later, Phil was walking along his sexy path amid this newly-created urban wonderland. Matt's advice was to "drink it all in - literally", which was code for "let's go down the pub for a pint". The stressed plants may be thirsty but Matt and Phil aren't.