Ed Miliband turns garden designer with scary new sculpture for Downing Street garden

One of Britain’s great traditions is the open garden afternoon: an opportunity for folk revelling in being both middle-aged and nosy (like me) to wander around other people’s plots and peer at what they’ve planted while scoffing large slices of cake.

The National Gardens Scheme and Open Squares are two of the most popular, and while they do allow people to see the true beauty of someone else’s well-maintained dahlia bed or snowdrop collection, they also help us indulge in that also very British tradition of pointing at the strange things people put in their back yards. Often these strange things aren’t weird planting combinations, but sculptures that have special emotional meaning to the owners but which are a bit eccentric, such as alarmingly large statues of the owner with a deceased pet, Bible verses inscribed around a walled garden, or slightly raunchy sculptures hidden in the shrubbery.

The Downing Street Garden opens to the public via a special ballot system each year, and having wandered round peering at the gorgeous roses and delphiniums, it’s well worth a visit for anyone who loves plants.