Some prized examples may be worth up to £2,000 each, and particularly big hauls have been reported recently. Last year, thieves netted more than £2,500-worth of koi carp from two gardens near Epsom, Surrey.Police advise gardeners to plant thorny shrubs and trees to act as “living barbed wire”. After the garden makeover, it’s the great garden takeaway. Plants, pots, ornaments, tools, shrubs, fish and even lawns are being stolen in such quantity that insurance experts say the garden crimewave is costing householders as much as £400m a year.

Recent seasons have seen a complete front garden, including lawn, stolen in Cardiff; the Bristol garden of Colin and Linda Warburton stripped of trees, shrubbery, sundial, benches and pond full of fish; and an award-winning Nottingham garden robbed of its plants, 25 garden gnomes, Greek urn and five wall-mounted squirrels.Last week, as the new garden theft season got under way, thieves took rare camellias, box bushes, and other shrubs from three gardens in Warwick. One victim, Margaret Soomro, said: “We feel quite violated, really. They took only choice plants – they obviously knew exactly what they were looking for.” And last month, plants, a young weeping willow tree and a 6ft-high bird table were taken from a community garden in Lincoln.Rose Ward, campaigns manager for Gardening Which?, said the number of thefts has risen as people spend more on their gardens. Even a modest-sized suburban garden, if well-stocked, may represent an investment over the years of £7,500-£10,000. “Thefts are an increasing problem,” Ms Ward said, “but nobody keeps the statistics to prove it.”Yet the IoS’s research with police and gardening organisations suggests claims of more than one million garden thefts a year may not be exaggerated. Statuary has always been popular with thieves, but now even a row of bedding plants is not safe.

Among thefts were: eight fir trees in Cambridge; a hedge in west London; shrubs in Folkestone; 50 fish from one Hampshire garden pond; stones from walls in Derbyshire and Scarborough; geraniums and window boxes in Canterbury; a 9ft-tall beech tree in Evesham, Worcestershire; a Kent shed ram-raided to steal a £1,000 lawnmower; a newly-laid lawn rolled up in Teesside; and tools and containers taken from almost everywhere.Although police occasionally catch thieves who specialise in gardens, most of the crimes are believed to be carried out by opportunists. There is the green-eyed, green-fingered local who sees a choice specimen and takes it, people who steal smaller items to sell at boot sales, and cowboy landscapers who, having billed for shrubs or pots, steal the items and “re-site” them.There is also the keen grower armed with secateurs and plastic bag who visits gardens open to the public and feels free to take cuttings and seed-heads Some organisations are now wising up. Norman Watson, a writer who has spent the past 15 years researching the movement and its contribution to modern democracy, said: “Their treatment was out of all proportion to the crimes they committed. A pardon now would reflect that.”Not everyone, though, agrees. The campaign has been dismissed as “daft” by one relative, who says the pioneers would have been proud of breaking the law.Lady Diana Dollery, whose grandmother, Myra Sadd-Brown, was arrested for throwing a brick through the window of the War Office, said: “In my family it’s always been regarded with pride that my grandmother went to prison.”She got two months’ hard labour for throwing a brick Well, she had thrown a brick They had committed the crimes Surely pardons are for people who didn’t commit crimes?”. If, as it appears, Prescott has joined those who now think that Blair is a drag on the Labour Party, then the Prime Minister’s time in office may be running out.HOW THE CABINET DIVIDESThe transformers vs the consolidatorsLeaving aside all the personal rivalries and animosities, the real political divide in today’s Cabinet is between the “transformers” and the “consolidators”.This is the latest version of the divide that has assailed the Labour Party for more than a decade.