I'M looking forward to next week, because I'm going to be judging a class in one of the local garden competitions and I love looking around other people's gardens.

Since I have also begun to compile the Cornish Gardener (and incidentally, should you ever have an interesting garden story, picture or anecdote, do send it my way) I have discovered all over again just how nice people who are interested in gardening are.

At the drop of a hat they invite you into their garden, show you round, tell you where the plants came from, and discuss their plans for next year at length.

And it's not just idle boasting about the highlights. They are quite happy to tell you which plants have failed or been lost forever, which bits of the garden are hopeless and point out where the dog has ruined a beautiful azalea because it insists on using just that one bush as a lavatory.

Translate that to someone showing you round their house and it would be unlikely that they would tell you how much the furniture was or where they bought it, that the hall smells funny because there's a patch of dry rot in the understairs cupboard or that the damp patch on the back bedroom carpet is there because their cat can't be persuaded to go outside to wee in wet weather.

No, garden people are nice. At the drop of a hat they will give you seeds, cuttings or sometimes uproot a spare plant for you.

Lean over a garden fence at the house of a total stranger and admire the borders and you could find yourself being given a conducted tour and tea on the terrace in next to no time. Perhaps the world would be a better place if all children were taught gardening at school.

I did once live next door to a man who didn't conform to this pattern. It was our first house and the neighbours didn't exactly bring out the welcome wagon when we moved in, in fact they didn't speak for several months.

Actually, I think they were detached people living in a semi-detached, hoping the other half of the building would somehow disappear. I noticed almost immediately that the wife hung out six newly laundered yellow dusters on the line every Monday morning and washed AND dried the inside of the dustbin every week, so I knew we weren't going to have much in common.

The man grew geraniums and if you admired his magnificent display, which you were obviously required to, would stop and talk. They were the only plants he grew in summer, and his front and back garden borders and beds were packed with them from end to end. They were actually pelargoniums, but in those days everyone called them geraniums and so did he.

From early summer onwards I watched Mr Geranium's progress. First came the mammoth planting session over a sunny weekend, involving not only gardening tools but a 12 inch ruler to make sure each plant was exactly the same distance from the next. Then he spent every waking hour nurturing the plants, pulling out any weed which dared to show its little green head above the soil and spraying every living creature in the vicinity. The results were certainly impressive although it was obvious from the beginning that his gardening prowess was not matched by a similar one in colour sense because the plants were in violent contrasting colours ranging through all the reds and pinks.

He was quite happy to tell me the secret of his success, the main one being to replace the old plants with new ones every year, which he grew from cuttings in his greenhouse. He also told me how to take cuttings, when to take cuttings, how big the cuttings should be, what to plant the cuttings in and generally more information about geraniums cuttings than anyone could possibly need to know. (This was, incidentally, totally different from an old boy I once knew who used to say 'I just bungs em in and if they grows they grows').

As the season progressed I used to drop gentle hints about obtaining cuttings followed by increasingly heavy hints and eventually an outright 'Oh I'd love a few cuttings if you could spare some'. He never reacted to anything I said but it never occurred to me I wouldn't get at least a couple of cuttings.

Come the end of summer I glanced out of the window one morning and noticed with astonishment that every geranium had gone from the front garden. He had apparently been up since dawn removing them.

Later, in the back garden, I smelled smoke and peeped over the hedge. There, blazing away merrily, were the unwanted 'old plants', denuded of useful cuttings which were tucked away in Mr Geranium's greenhouse.

I mentioned this to George, the neighbour on the other side, and he said 'He's a mean old b....., wouldn't give you the skin off a rice pudding if you were a drowning man'; a totally incomprehensible comment like most of his little homilies. But I agreed with every word.

But back to the judging. Journalists often get asked to judge things. You can innocently go to an event and before you know it you're on stage surrounded by a dozen pensioners in decorative hats and you have to pick the best.

I never mind, it's fun mostly, apart from baby competitions.

The first time I was asked to judge a baby competition I was quite flattered until a colleague unkindly pointed out that they had asked me because firstly I was the only woman on staff, secondly I had three children so knew a bit about babies and thirdly nobody else would do it anyway because they had all done it before. His advice was to always compose one's face prior to leaning over the baby so that there wouldn't be a flicker of amazed horror once one caught sight of it, to stand back far enough not to get showered with anything wet and to leave as quickly as possible once the winner was chosen.

Good advice too, because I soon found that it was an impossible task. How do you judge a baby? It's not even like a dog, where you can check if it can sit to command and walks on a lead. All babies are cute, or at least cute to someone. Worse, you know you are going to be unpopular whatever choice you make. My mother never forgave our village midwife for ignoring my wiry frame and dimpled smile at six months in favour of a baby she said looked like a bag of dough with wrinkles in it. Mothers can get very vindictive when it comes to protecting their young and a baby judge needs a very thick skin, and a nimble getaway tactic.

To my colleague's list of advice I added the following. Always choose the baby with the largest group of admiring relatives round it and if there are less than five babies declare a draw and award them all a first prize. Even if you have to pay for it yourself.