Spanish bluebells are everywhere, the squirrels dig up everything, falling debris from poplar, acacia and elm lands everywhere and rot my plants. Foxes dig holes in the bank and there are no earth worms as they have all been eaten by flat worms.’

The situation was so depressing that even the bracing appendage that she added to her list of woes failed to encourage her. ‘There are no perennial weeds, just one small area of Japanese Knot Weed.’ She knew it was time to do something different. ‘The casualty list was long,’ she says, showing me a two-inch wide list of index cards on which failures such as azaleas have been carefully noted.

Now two years later the garden is completely transformed. The main focus of the planting is on winter colour. ‘In the summer the garden becomes a bossy muddle, it looks like a table at a jumble sale. What I want is a strong blast of colour during the dreary winter months. In the summer I am happy with the different

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