IT'S official, apparently - gardening is uncool.

A survey published this week reveals that among young people, the prospect of getting their hands dirty and getting a little bit cold while working in the garden, is massively unwelcome.

In a way, that is understandable.

Given a choice of sitting in a warm room playing computer games, playing football or some other sport, hanging out with their mates, or digging over the vegetable patch in preparation for winter, the last named would not attract many volunteers.

But there is a worrying aspect to this attitude, and it goes far beyond a reluctance among the young to don wellies and takes up a spade.

According to the aforementioned poll, involving 1,000 young people, two-thirds of them do not like getting cold and wet, and a third do not like getting their hands dirty.

The cold and wet bit is understandable, though it has to be said in the defence of gardening that anyone spending time in a garden engaging in good, honest toil, is unlikely to remain cold for long, provided they are suitably attired.

As for being 'wet', if it is raining, it is probably the wrong time to be doing a lot of things in the garden anyway, and if it is a matter of the garden being generally wet after rain, well, a little bit of water never hurt anyone.

Ultimately however, a reluctance to garden might have a range of harmful effects, and we see some of them already.

One is the trend of concreting over any patch of land that might otherwise need to be cultivated in order for it not to become an eyesore.

Some 'expert' on the radio earlier this week - during a discussion on flood risks - pointed out that the majority of small scale flooding is caused by the fact that so much ground is concreted over these days that in many cases when there is a heavy bout of rain, the water simply has nowhere to run off quickly enough, and so can cause domestic flood damage.

But even if that concreting over is carried out with the requisite allowance for drainage, what do we become? A nation of drive-owners? Staring out of our front and back windows at endless square metres of intricately patterned and perfectly aligned brick paviors?

It is happening already, and if our young are as uninterested, nay downright turned off, by the prospect of gardening as they seem to be, it is going to get worse.

Gardening is also a wonderful way to maintain one's health and fitness, first by growing one's own food, and second through the physical activity required in preparing and maintaining one's garden to grow said food.

And if you'd rather fill your garden with flowers and shrubs than potatoes and courgettes, the physical activity part stands, and there is undeniably much mental wellbeing to be had from observing the myriad colourful floral displays.

By not taking an interest in gardening, our younger generations will deny themselves a valuable means of exercise and an avenue toward cheaper healthy eating.

I have experience of this indifference, even antipathy, to gardening through my own offspring. Requests to help in the garden or at the allotment are met not so much with verbal protest as with facial expressions akin to their makers having been forced to drink the wringings-out of damp and dirty football socks.

Indeed, when it is announced that mum and/or dad are going to spend a couple of hours at the allotment, the news is greeted with a sort of patronising indulgence, along the lines of "well, if you must have your fun..."

The saving grace is that they - or more accurately the one who is not averse to eating fruit and veg - are more than happy to consume the products of our gardening hard work.

Sadly though, most self-respecting teens and 20-somethings would not consider spending hours in the garden. Like it or not, this is an activity that, the older we get, the more time we appear to spend on.

The trouble is that when all the gardens have been concreted over, and the pitifully small gardens of the new houses built on the sites of abandoned allotments have been concreted over too, there will be precious little space left anywhere for today's young - who in later life realise gardening isn't quite so uncool after all - to grow anything.