Decking seemed a great idea in the 90s. But so did Tony Blair | Patrick Barkham

Alan Titchmarsh regrets his role in popularising the wooden abominations – graves for generations of garden animals. But in decay there is an upsideDecking is like Tony Blair; widely embraced in the 1990s, now an embarrassing legacy of the bad old days. And neither look as splendid as they once did. Decking hasn’t simply decayed into a mildewed death-trap, it’s accused of being plundered from rainforests to smother gardens where butterflies, hedgehogs and songbirds once flouris