Editor-At-Large: Harry's got problems - but nothing like those in my garden

In a few days I shall be in New Zealand, applying myself to judging the World of Wearable Art Awards. Picking the best bra made from a couple of rubber pig's heads (I'm not kidding) will be infinitely preferable to enduring another chapter in the Battle of the Borders (herbaceous, that is) currently raging in a tiny garden in deepest Yorkshire.

The humble plot at the back of my stone cottage in Upper Nidderdale has become the setting for a saga worthy of any soap. Think Dallas with dry-stone walls, Alan Ayckbourn with strimmers and twig pyramids, and you begin to get the picture. Gardening might have been Britain's No 1 pastime for decades, but all I was interested in for 10 years was growing vegetables. After a couple of slipped discs, I let the slugs take the gold medal and hung up my trowel. For several years, the garden got more dishevelled and unkempt, but in an attractive kind of way – a bit like its owner. Then I looked out at the rampant roses and realised it was time for a new look. Out with the jungle and in with a tasteful 21st-century cottage garden, groomed lawn and charming borders.

According to a National Trust gardener on the Today programme last week, the climate has changed so much that every month is a growing time, and January is about the only period when you can give the mower a holiday. Consequently, gardens now need highly trained operatives slaving on them 24/7, and finding one ready and available to work wonders is as difficult as getting hold of a plumber. I paid a couple of visits to local flower shows (in order to see what not to grow – potentially an excellent green-fingered version of Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine's TV series What Not to Wear) and left my name at several nurseries. Three Capability Browns later, I am now the proud owner of a free-form lawn, a Japanese-style rock garden, and a telegraph pole that's been wrapped in bamboo to resemble a totemic work of art. It's taken eight months and several thousand pounds and there's not a border in sight. So what went wrong?

Before you mock, I pride myself on my communication skills. I have spoken at Sandhurst College on the difference between leadership and management. Only last week, I gave a lecture in Canterbury Cathedral on the importance of modern art. I've debated the glass ceiling with top male executives and taught A-level students about current affairs on television. So how come I can rap with all these disparate groups of people, but when I speak to a gardener it emerges as, well, Martian? My simple wishes have been interpreted as a horticultural fantasy that's made me a laughing stock in my own village. And although I've edited a national newspaper, run a television station and headed a big department at the BBC, when it comes to talking to a man with a trowel in one hand and a lump of turf in the other, my people skills evaporate to the point where legal action is being threatened and a hysterical correspondence ensues, loaded with recriminations.

Like plumbers, gardeners can turn up when they like. You are privileged that they deign to arrive at all. If you fancy making a wheelbarrow of money, go on a short course and gain a National Degree in Amenity Horticulture, watch a bit of Charlie Dimmock for inspiration, and you will soon have a waiting list of people like me. One of my "gardeners" turned out to be an ex-teacher who unfortunately suffered from vertigo. He refused to climb six feet up a ladder to trim the ivy. The next one (a former architect) turned up on Christmas Eve, anxious to start work. We set February as his start date, after spending two hours discussing the job in detail. By the end of April, he still hadn't arrived, always on a "patio job" for someone else. When I demanded a real start date, he wrote and told me I'd been sacked for being aggressive. Next came another young man with a clipboard, who noted down every word and promised to complete the job in time for the summer holidays.

When I arrived for a break, my garden resembled a construction site. The job had been started a couple of days before, as my gardener had been at the Chelsea Flower Show for inspiration – and judging from what I saw from my kitchen window, perhaps indulging in some recreational drugs too. My garden looked as if it had been designed by Rosemary Verey on Ecstasy. The rectangular lawn had been removed and in its place was the grass equivalent of a kidney-shaped swimming pool, surrounded by fancy rocks and stones, Kyoto-style. A large willow screen edged in ugly timber blocked out my neighbour. Simple tasks such as cleaning the existing patio or trimming the roses had been ignored in favour of the full facelift. My telegraph pole looked like something from the Wild West. I wanted to cry. A raised bed was full of weird plants, not a pansy in sight. At the front was a nasty red-coloured shrub with a label declaring that it grew to a height of 15 feet – surely a mistake? My acer had been "pruned" by having the top sliced off it. I stopped a workman from installing a privet pyramid he was unloading from the van. "This is Upper Nidderdale," I screamed hysterically, "not Prince Charles's latest effort at Highgrove."

I spent the next two months looking for another gardener. I found one at the coal merchants, but his waiting list was too long. He used to be the local butcher. Finally Mr Binks arrived. We bonded, and the reconstruction work began. The totem pole has gone, and order is returning to my raised beds. The acer still looks like a war victim, and there's not a lot you can do about a weird lawn or Japanese stones. Perhaps I'll write to Sting and Trudi and say a Buddhist shrine is available should the Dalai Lama fancy a cup of tea and a spot of meditation next time he's in the Pateley Bridge area.

Princely snappers Â

Finally Prince Harry is 18, and just wants to lead a "normal" life. So who chose glamour photographer Mario Testino to take his official pictures? This is the man who put Diana on the cover of English Vogue, transforming her downwards from princess to party girl. His pictures are gorgeous, vacuous, glossy. Maybe Prince Harry is too. If the Royal Family wants to project a contemporary image, then why not choose a photographer like Rankin?

Helmut Newton is my role model. At 81, this brilliant photographer still works all the time, drinks, and thrives on gossip and the company of women. Tracey Emin and Marie Helvin were draped around him at the opening of his latest exhibition last week. Once I wore a pair of red patent high heels to meet him, and his wife June sagely remarked: "Very Helmut." His landscape photography is not as well known as his fashion work, but is equally original and idiosyncratic. Most of his work on show at the Mayor Gallery in London couldn't be shown in a national newspaper – let's just say knickers are in short supply. But these aren't women belittled by their photographer – the images show them as powerful creatures that the physically frail Mr Newton is totally intimidated by. When I run for Mayor of London, Helmut's doing the pictures.