Direct Line, the insurance company, estimates that, as a nation, we have £12.2bn worth of valuable items in our gardens, or just over £300 per household. And garden makeovers are increasingly popular, even though they cost, on average, between £3,000 and £6,000.
Higher spending on gardens is also fuelling higher insurance claims. Summers in this country might be short, but that has not stopped Britons from spending ever-larger sums on their gardens. “They’re either buying a second home or they’re going there to live permanently. And you’ve still got some locals left, which provides a balance. It’s just a lovely place.”The lowdownCost of living: Two-bed cottages from £150,000; three-bed bungalows from £200,000; four-bed houses from £250,000; waterside homes from £260,000.Attractions: Galleries and craft shops; annual arts festival; watersports and regatta; North Devon Maritime Museum; fresh fish in foodie pubs; locally made Hocking’s ice-cream; yacht club across the estuary; Northam Burrows country park; Westward Ho! beach; links golf course; Lundy ferry from Bideford.How to get there: Three hours 50 minutes by train from Paddington to Barnstaple via Exeter, then 50 minutes by bus; an hour’s drive from J27 of the M5.USP: Narrow streets of old cottages and watery appeal for artists, walkers and sea-dogs alike.. “My ancestors lived in Appledore,” says David, “so it just feels right.

It’s relaxed here.” Job flexibility is the key to financial survival, he says. “Tourism is the main source of income now and it’s very quiet in winter so you have to do more than one thing.”"Seventy per cent of the Appledore market is people from outside the South-west,” says Peter McHugh, of Webbers estate agents in Bideford. The nearest supermarket is in Bideford, three miles away.David Carter and his wife Jenny moved from Swindon 18 months ago and turned the village’s oldest dwelling into an art gallery. A clutch of small trawlers moor alongside, including one whose skipper sells fresh fish straight from the boat.The light on the water has long been a magnet for artists. And in the past decade particularly, a sizeable community of potters, painters and craftspeople has evolved, and the village hosts an innovative annual arts festival.On top of this, it boasts a primary school, post office, library, late-opening Co-op, church, half-a-dozen pubs, butcher, fish-and-chip shop, several caf?cum-restaurants and an ice-cream firm.

The place comes alive at high tide, when the sailboats emerge from the North Devon Yacht Club at Instow opposite, and children leap into the water from the quayside. One glimpse up the maze of alleyways makes it easy to imagine the smugglers of old melting away from the customs men.It is still the sea that draws visitors. One tiny two-bed house backing on to the water that cost £80,000 in 2000 was resold last summer, after renovation, for £273,000.A stroll around the churchyard bears testament to Appledore’s trials with the ocean: “drowned in Bideford Bay” and “lost at sea” are typical inscriptions. Henry Williamson, whose Tarka the Otter was partly set in the estuary, was a regular at its pubs in the 1930s.Recently, there has been gentrification. Cottages on the favoured seaward side have rocketed in price.