Eleven years ago, almost to the day, our good friend Anna called, “Come over this evening. I want to take you to visit a garden I’m looking after while the owners are away”. Anna knows a good thing when she sees it and has a nose for a too-good-to-miss moment. And it was exactly that. A perfect June evening with the sun still well above the tree tops and hours of daylight still ahead of us. After a short drive through dappled lanes we parked the car and walked along the rough, grassy track that led to the gateway at the beginning of a wood. We moved from the open ground and followed the now mossy track some considerable distance into the shadows. A series of glades began to open as we approached the house, which was nestled in a secret garden of wild and wonderful informality. An occupation of the wood and somewhere with a heightened mood that you might dream about, but rarely experience in reality.

My lasting memory, which has eclipsed the remembrance of more detail, was of the enormous stands of a silver-leaved rose, hunkered into the edges of the glades and scrambling into the trees. Bathed in the evening light that poured from the oculus in the glade and backed by the mysterious darkness of the wood, they glowed in their moment of June perfection. Still more bud than flower, the pale, ivory blooms lit up the approaching dusk. Although the owners were away, Anna said they would be more than happy for me to take a cutting (or two), for it would have been impossible to leave without a memento to mark what I already knew would be an indelible moment.