Earlier this summer I had one of those encounters with nature, the sort that makes you wonder at the uncanny interconnectivity of things ... suddenly, from the edge of the pond, a frog. All eyes in the half light. He leapt out onto the edge and stared at me. I stopped playing. He stood still. I watched a while then picked up the tune again...

Okay, so I’m not what you’d call classically courageous. But I’ve worked up ladders, I’ve reversed trailers, I’ve wielded a pruning saw in anger. So why does the phrase, ‘Max, do you fancy doing the flower arranging today’, give me the collywobbles?

I don’t know when I started gardening by stealth; I guess you could say it crept up on me. A sneaky little pelargonium here. A covert aeonium there. But one thing led to another and before I knew it what had begun as a harmless (and relatively affordable) habit had turned into full-blown plant dependence. 

So, there’s a house on our street. At least I think there’s a house; it’s hard to tell what with the dense thicket of oversized shrubbery that’s slowly ingesting it.

‘You’ve got a job for life there...’ I guarantee that anyone who has ever worked in a public garden will be familiar with this well-worn phrase. Word of advice: don’t get drawn in. Once, I did just that, mistakenly presuming a response was required:

Have you ever been in a garden mess room? They are rarely mentioned, but are sacrosanct spaces that provide much needed sanctuary – from the sun, from the rain, from the visitors…