Blast from the past: Garden gnomes - you either love them or loathe them

Personally, they give me the hebegeebees, what with their grinning, chubby faces, beards, buckled belts and pot bellies, poaching unwary fish out of ornamental ponds. What sort of rascality are these diminutive ragamuffins up to?

Some sit on toadstools or tree stumps in rockeries, others have little tin cans to water your perennials. Others flagrantly pee in you peonies.

Gnomes have been a feature in gardens since Victorian times, introduced as a touch of aristocratic whimsy, only to be ruthlessly discarded as soon as the rest of us caught on

They became popular in the 1940s after Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. In the 1960s, plastic took over from clay and the first female gnomes appeared

Gnomes are adored and despised in equal measure by gardeners.

I am in the latter camp. I find them a tad tacky and garish, for where there is a gnome, a wagon wheel or concrete squirrel won’t be far behind...