Now is the time to find out if your garden will become a burden this year.

You'd think it would be obvious when your garden becomes a burden. Sometimes it is, but most of us struggle, thinking we'll have more time next week or the week after or the week after that. You get the idea.

So how do you work this out? Because, strange to say, it's often not that obvious.

Let me tell you a little story about how the penny finally dropped with me. I had two allotments — one for the nine chickens I kept and one for growing vegetables. One evening the fox called, and by the end of his visit I had no more chickens. Around the same time, the allotment officer contacted me to say my plot was too weedy and would I please do something about it.

After much railing and ranting — with myself, mostly — it became clear that the best solution was to give up the chicken allotment and give half the vegetable allotment to another gardener. It all sounds obvious with hindsight, but it took the fox and the allotment officer to make me realise I didn't have enough time to enjoy looking after the hens and grow vegetables, and that neither activity fitted comfortably into my lifestyle anymore.

So the key to deciding whether your garden has become a burden is to be very honest about whether it fitted comfortably into your lifestyle last year.

Find a point in the day when you'll have at least half an hour uninterrupted. Take a cup of tea — or a glass of wine — and go into the garden. Look around it. If your garden is big enough, walk around it.

Instead of looking at all the jobs that need doing or will need doing, look past them and just ask yourself this: how did the garden feel last year? If your garden is a large one, go to the different areas within it and ask the same question. Can you look at your borders and feel nothing but delight, or were there aspects that felt overwhelming?

Other clues to look for are the words 'should' and 'ought'. Did you say things like "I should be in the garden now" or "I want to read the paper but I ought to be doing the garden"?

If you do come to the conclusion that your garden has become a burden, then congratulations. You've just made the best decision in relation to your garden this year — because now you know you need to do things differently.

That might mean simplifying what you have. It might mean redesigning a section that's always been hard work. Or it might mean having a conversation with someone who can look at the whole picture with fresh eyes and help you find a way forward.