I am most definitely a fair-weather gardener—leaving my garden for months at a time without a backward glance, but when home, the first drop of rain has me out there, bottom up, head down, in the garden.

As summer thunderstorms are few and far between, I do spend much of February not in my garden—although always thinking about it. Thinking about how to make it even more resilient and yet, at the same time, enigmatic.

What strikes me most is that the area where I spend so little time working gives the most pleasure. The wild garden, with its huge, towering shady elms and the creek that embraces it, is by far my favourite part of the garden. Even on the hottest February day, to wander down there at sunset and enjoy those long, golden, raking beams of liquid sunshine is incentive enough for me to pick up fallen limbs and just wander through, imbibing beauty.

Thankfully, I have gone past the nursery stage of thinking that buying plants is the key to making a beautiful garden. I am now perceptive enough to understand that it is about creating atmosphere. And this can mean creating garden spaces, using well-placed sculptures to draw the eye, creating a vista, or having a secret garden to explore.

The three sculptures that have inspired me over summer have been those that cleverly use water as a reflective surface to mirror changing skies and overhanging foliage.