Horticultural, edible, cultural and shoppable, and once a residential college for women gardeners, run by the formidable Beatrix Havergal. Allow several hours, and take a pcinic.

The first National Trust property I have visited where the garden, not the house, is the point', Ludwig Messel’s Grade II listed garden, a ruin kept as a gothic folly, and a rock garden with more attitide than most.

Having done Villandry, Chaumont and Chenonceau, I went looking for a hidden gem on the other Loir. Not quite hidden, but the unpublicised organic kitchen garden was worth the pidgin French.

Remember the rewilded beaver garden? It went to a mental health chaity in Buckinghamshire. Where Chelsea’s best show gardens end up, and who finds £250,000 a garden once Project Giving Back stops after 2026?

when you come across a lawn of crocuses in their tricolour array of white, yellow and purple it can stop you in your tracks

Twelve months, twelve photographs: a brutal January on Wimbledon Common, Wakehurst in February, the ancient laurel forest in Madeira, Sarah Price at Chelsea, and the year I finally learned to design gardens in 3D.

Smaller and far easier to walk than Wisley, and a corrective to my southern view of gardening up north. Salvias Amistad, Black and Blue, and Hotlips all thriving in North Yorkshire.

I did not expect to like it. 14,000 perennials, 120 metres of beech hedging and 60,000 bulbs later, it is the best argument I know for planting a garden that peaks in autumn.

Photographs of Wimbledon Common in autumn