Hell is a rented garden

For the past few years, I have been a joyful Chelsea Flower Show attendee. Every May, my phone’s photo album usually becomes stuffed with pictures of plants: variegated borders in shades of white and purple, hostas bursting from decorative pots, cornus trees providing shade over ground cover of miniature geraniums. I obsess over dahlias, clematis and roses, not to mention the mini greenhouses, chic she-sheds and pretty pergolas.

A couple of years ago, I had recently acquired for the first time my own garden and was embarking on filling it with gusto. I was drunk on possibility when it came to what I could fill my little patch with. Climbing roses! Strawberry beds! A fig tree!

I spent accordingly. It was impossible to pass a garden centre without dropping a ton every time. I started hiding new plant purchases from my husband, digging them in furtively as soon as I got home before he enquired how much I’d forked out.