Although it is winter, the garden is full of colour: mostly soft yellows, russet-browns, and here and there little flecks of red. That is how I like it. More and more I enjoy winter in those gardens where deciduous plants predominate. In winter you can see lichen on the grey-brown branches, including that fascinating reseda-green lichen that hangs like little bunches of lace from the slender twigs of spiraeas and their kind. Soon this lichen will be a foil for the petals of the Pearl Bush, Exochorda racemosa.

Come to think of it, in gardens I love all the things most gardeners abhor: moss in lawns; lichen on trees; more greenery than 'colour' (as if green isn't a colour!); bare branches in winter; and root-ridden ground, wherein one never attempts to dig, with a natural covering of leaves, or grass, or of some amenable low-growing plant. I like the whole thing to be as wild as possible, so that you have to fight your way through in places...