You’ll be familiar with the so-called broken window theory of crime and urban decay first popularised by Rudy Giuliani when he was mayor of New York City. The theory holds that you tackle serious crime by also tackling (so-called) minor crime – ie, violence and theft thrive in an environment where lesser acts of illegality, chucking a stone through a window for instance, go unpunished.

The corollary of the broken window theory is zero tolerance policing (zero tolerance local governmentalling too: the window must be swiftly repaired). The idea that the police should ignore small crimes and misdemeanours to concentrate their resources on more serious offences is, proponents argue, mistaken.

When broken windows/zero tolerance was adopted in New York and other US cities, a dramatic drop in crime ensued, although opinion divides on the degree of causality involved, and various other explanations for the drop have been plausibly advanced. Still, we can all agree that, in general, it is much harder to misbehave when there is order and calm than it is when chaos already reigns.

And so to my front garden. I make no apology for having a generous front garden when many in the inner city do not. I am merely reaping the benefit of having been willing to move to Hackney when, despite its attractive housing stock and proximity to financial, media and legal centres, very few other middle-class people would entertain the idea. There are advantages to not being frightened of living among poor people, and while having a decent front garden is not usually mentioned among them, it is all the same.

Still, property brings with it responsibility, and one of my responsibilities is the maintenance of my garden in good order. I am by nature a tidy person (I see the state of some colleagues’ desks around here and I shake my head), so this duty is not as onerous for me as it would be for others. On the other hand, a large London plane overhangs the house, and thus do I wage a constant battle against leaves, twigs and the explode-on-impact seed pods deposited by this tree. I sweep, I collect, I bag, the job is never done.

I was out there at the weekend with my cousin George. (At 41, George is two years younger than me, so, in the way that relationships established early on in life tend to perpetuate, I still get to push him around.) We were each kneeling in our allotted corner, fishing sweet wrappers out of daisies, moaning about our aching knees, and I noticed that George seemed to be taking the job as seriously as I was, going that extra inch to retrieve recalcitrant crisp packets and the like. Evidence of shared genetic characteristics is always delightful, thus did we fall to discussing our mutual addiction to tidying up.

Between us we agreed that, within reason (ruling out excavating canals in the 18th century, or being a Chinese coal miner in the 21st), manual labour is good for you. Not just good for your body, which gets some exercise, or good for your mind, which has an opportunity to pootle along on auto for a while, but good for your soul, the essence of your being. We weren’t sure why this was so. Perhaps it’s to do with manual labour having been the norm for all but the last sliver of human history.

We also decided it is intellectually and emotionally pleasurable to bring order to disorder. If this is true of numbers, of history, of vineyards, grapes and vintages (George is in the wine game), it is equally true of garden detritus. I see a cornerful of desiccated leaves, shrivelled polythene, crushed coke cans and impacted seed pods, and after ten minutes’ work with a dustpan and brush, a bin bag and a bucket of water, I see instead a damp, clean, dust-free slab of stone, and my heart thrills. George said he felt the same way.

At this point we straightened up, leant on our brooms, said, “Eeeeee” a few times, and got sidetracked by George telling me he’d once tried to join the French Foreign Legion. We’d been off each other’s radars at the time, and, unbeknown to me, George had made his way to Marseilles to sign up. He’d excelled in the medical and aced the intelligence test, but after ten days in a barracks in Provence, the legion sent him packing with 500 francs and a ticket to Paris. Unfortunately, George simply wasn’t psychotic enough to do dirty work for the French government. All the same, good effort for trying.

Back on our knees, I said I had a third motivation for getting busy: setting a good example. George said I really was getting middle-aged, and I said, no, it’s less to do with “What will the neighbours think?” than seeking to alleviate the worst instincts of those few neighbours prone to unpleasantness. Following the broken windows theory, it is harder to stab someone when there’s a nice geranium in the background, especially if that geranium has been conscientiously deadheaded. No one is going to blame my front garden for their own lack of self-control.

robert.crampton@thetimes.co.uk