Me, I'm just a lawn mower, you can tell me by the way I walk.*

Getting your garden just how you want is often easier said than done but I like a challenge and up until now have only turned down opportunities because they would require too large a team to carry out the work in a reasonable time. The first garden I really worked on to get it how I wanted was my own. The second garden I worked on was my mother's. The former took many years to take shape, the latter three months but in both cases I started with a blank slate and after the last plant was put in the ground, discovered the deep fulfilment that comes from transforming featureless spaces into garden havens.

Robert Fraser. The Gentle Giant.

I've always had a keen interest in gardens and plants. Some of my earliest memories from the mid-1960s involve being outside with my cousins playing our version of kick the can or chasing after the whirring blades of the grass cutter my grandfather used to hitch onto his tractor. We would often wander into the humid heat of his greenhouse with its rich scent of ripening tomatoes . To this day I remember wondering why there was a water tank in the corner. We would hide under the sweeping branches of a weeping willow and clamber over ivy-covered fences. Picking gooseberries wasn't exactly a joy but mother did make a killer gooseberry fool.

The Golden Carp Rock and Dragon Gate Warterfall. Kinkakuji Temple, Kyoto.

10 years in Japan followed my graduation from London University with a degree in Japanese Studies in 1985 and I didn't really return to gardening until moving back to the UK and eventually taking possession of a Victorian terraced house in Colchester in 2003. While I didn't study Japanese horticulture it was hard not to notice how the parks were laid out and everything kept very much in its place. Damp, mossy spaces in the grounds of temples were probably my favourite places to visit. The bright green of moss and ferns had an incredibly calming effect. Water would trickle through, often gathering in a hollowed out rock or slowly filling a length of hinged bamboo. When it achieved critical mass, the bamboo would empty the water out and return to its rocky base with an echoing thud. Trickle. Splash. Thud. The first time you come across one, you can hear it from afar as you approach and wonder what the noise is. From then on, you know exactly what to expect and cannot help but feel a sense of anticipation. Just how lovely is its setting going to be?

Green tunnel not yet quite joined at the top...

How to make the most of a fairly long and narrow space with a brick wall at one end? It took several iterations to find the answer. Plants would die, trees would be uprooted by gale force winds. Decking came and went. Paths were laid and relaid. Eventually turf became cobbles & the soil excavated for a five foot square deep pond was put to use to create a bank for a staggered display of sun-loving plants under the brick wall. A bed of Magnolia Stellata, Korean Dwarf Lilac and Corokia Virgata, hid the inner sanctum where all was calm from view. Access was via a cobbled path through a tunnel of magnolia, rose and jasmine.

Where once a wooden desert held sway...

My mother's garden was wholly covered in decking when she moved from London in 2015. It took days to remove all the rotten wood. Neighbours said nothing grew in the compacted soil where their houses were built in the 1970s on the site of a factory of some sort. Nonsense, I thought. We just need to dig a couple of beds out to a depth of three feet and fill with compost and fresh topsoil. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. Except that access was through a door in the garage, which meant everything had to be done by hand and every ounce of unwanted soil removed by wheelbarrow. Many tonnes of soil and debris were removed and all told, 20 tonnes of material brought in. The end product, a large paved seating area that looked onto two neatly balanced beds which over time exploded with life and colour, was both easy to maintain and lovely to look at. I realised then that this was what I wanted to do - transform outdoor spaces into gardens that clients can truly enjoy. Possibly love, even... and so here I am, ten years older, wishing I'd thought about it just a little bit harder. Only joking!

And for my next trick...

*From 'I know what I like (in your wardrobe)' Genesis, 1973.