I never met him but Russell Page’s autobiography ‘The Education of a Gardener’ was a big early influence – I was attracted by the exotic exuberance of the life he lead.  When I trained, Geoffrey Jellicoe was a visiting professor, his work, his absolute conviction that landscape design was the ONLY thing to do, and his link to a time of great heroes, all had a great influence on me.  For as long as I can remember, my great, great uncle Edwin Lutyens, the architect and garden designer, who worked at a time before architecture and landscape design were put into separate boxes, was, and still is, an ever-present force in my life.  And recently, a long-published book by a Japanese aestheticist Tanizaki – ‘In Praise of Shadows’ – was a revelation and reminder that subtle details are important; that there is an alternative to the current trend for the colour-blazing, attention-grabbing and photocentric

Childhood memories of my grandparents’s garden in East Sussex, a Georgian rectory on the edge of the Pevensey Levels which stretched to a far horizon. I was small and it seemed enormous but safe – a cedar tree so huge that it darkened the sky; Easter holidays when daffodills turned green grass yellow – where did they come from? where did they go?; the thrill of the long drive in and the sudden roar of the gravel sweep; a teardrop-shaped conservatory with an ancient grape vine and scented geraniums; a walled garden with a gnarled mulberry tree and a ruined glass house which we further destroyed with an airgun. It was old and comfortable, formal in parts but ragged at the edges; it seemed ever-lasting but of course, it wasn’t – le domaine perdu. It was my grandfather’s pride and joy but one which he happily let us romp through; it was an English country garden and nature, unthreatening, was very presen