Every year we open the garden to a small number of organised tour groups, some of which come from as far afield as Australia, Argentina and the United States. These visits must be carefully planned and orchestrated. We have precious little on-site parking and our single track lane, which is winding and high-sided, wends precipitously downhill from the main road above us. Last year the transport provider for a tour operator failed to heed our carefully worded advice regarding access and managed to wedge a 48 seater coach on the way down. It was a hot July day and the visitors had to clamber through the hedges to get out of the bus. The driver was red in the face with anger at having to scrape the bus out of its jam and then continue a further hair-raising two miles down the lane before reaching a more suitable road. Our policy now is to encourage groups to first pay a visit to Derry Watkins’ Special Plants Nursery, a crow’s flight away, and then ferry visitors down here in people carriers. A visit to Derry’s wonderful nursery never disappoints and is a win-win for everybody.

Sharing the garden in this limited way feels important to us, now that our efforts are beginning to chime. This is a place that we have evolved over time. We have deliberately not rushed and the slow burn, the importance of taking time to look before acting, has allowed us to gauge the right moves and measure our resources and energies. It took six years here before we started the garden proper. Repairing hedges, planting orchards, woodland and field trees and oversowing the pastures to convert them to meadow all took precedence. The trial garden I put in place to test what worked here during that time was a luxury in many ways and certainly not something I could do for a client, but it allowed me to see what did well here and what felt right and in context.