I’ve sought the shelter of a young oak tree, it can’t be more than 40 or 50 years old, I hope that it’ll be here to provide shade for long generations to come. On the river plain below me the cattle have also found shelter under the alders that sporadically populate the river bank as it winds its way through the valley. I think Alders are amongst the most beautiful trees, they have a talent for arranging their branches in a way which resembles bonsai writ large.

I came on this walk seeking inspiration, I find that my mood dips when weather loses its dynamism, the constant change, like the wind across the ocean drives me onwards. When the weather finds itself in the doldrums, so do I. The garden is also under stress caused by the lack of water, and I too feel that stress. I came here to escape the garden and to experience something else, something bigger, to perhaps reset my mood and to put things back into perspective.

The field I’ve chosen for my walk is a meadow which is only grazed in the winter but has a path mown around its periphery. A walk around it may constitute a mile at most and for the first part I saw nothing that particularly interested me and I thought of turning back and heading home. About halfway around I started to notice the pockets of dozens of meadow brown butterflies and a rabbit stopped and held my attention on the path for a few minutes. By the time a couple of tiny birds lifted like magic from the long grass and settled to discuss next steps in a thorn tree nearby I was beginning to relax.

The wild Marjoram that thrives on the upper field margin is thronged with butterflies, perhaps it produces more nectar in hot dry conditions than the field scabious can manage. The scabious flowers are tiny and pale lavender pincushions that weave through the thin golden grass below the spot I have chosen to stop. As the sunlight peaks and fades so clouds of butterflies dance just above the almost static grasses.

In the time I’ve sat here writing this, I’ve become an accepted part of the landscape, and have been treated to many a close quarter fly by, butterfly wings almost brushing my face as their slow, haphazard flights move ever forward onto an unknown destination.

From where I’m sat sounds from the bridge occasionally break nature’s peaceable silence; joyful children, and excited dogs, but up here in the field it’s the sound of the water tumbling over the weir, bees and very little else.

A good friend and a person I really respect recently told me that my instagram posts were repetitive. They’re not wrong, but the truth is that the reason I post the same view over and over again is that each time I feel compelled to take the photograph, no, moved to take the photograph is because to me it is new.

The thing that I hate most about gardening and particularly gardening at Iford, and maybe it’s got more to do with my age than anything is, just how quickly the garden changes. A moment ago the cherry bank was perfect, and now it’s over, the snakes head Fritillaries which I love so much have withered, even the bluebells are starting to fade. I’m not sure when it happened but life goes by at such a frenetic pace. Each moment is becoming more precious, every extra second I can linger and watch a bee on a flower, a butterfly warming its wings in the sunshine, every moment captured and every moment lost feels important.

You have to be able to stand still to see. You have to find the time to listen and to really hear, to catch the sweet scents on the chilly spring breeze.

Sometimes a use photography to make myself slow down to look, and sometimes it’s a tool to capture a moment. Photographs and even memories are poor substitutes for being there, in the moment, present and alive, but they do attempt to capture something of the essence of the experience.

My photographs are a little repetitive, it’s true, but each time they try to show the moment as I see it and as I experience it.

I’m a strong believer in events and episodes falling into some intangible order, perhaps pre determined, maybe set down by fate. Often I find that the right thing will appear at the right time if it’s meant to be.

My trip to Derbyshire was undertaken on a whim, for some reason it seemed the right moment to visit Haddon. The preceding day at Chatsworth the warm autumn sunshine had seemed to reflect the richness of the scene. The day we visited Haddon began in a thick chilly blanket of fog.

Arriving at Haddon the fortified medieval manor was barely visible on its high limestone bluff, appearing to float above the tree line like a mythical stronghold of Arthurian legend. Providence couldn’t have chosen a better day to appreciate the romance of that ancient place.

Once through the huge heavy oak door, up steps worn through by hundreds of years of continuous use, I emerged into a paved inner courtyard and was transported back in time. I visited the chapel first, medieval wall paintings still intact, you felt the weight of history in the very air of the place.

Wandering Haddon’s ancient halls, where time has simultaneously stood still and yet has worn a endlessly deep vein of history into the very fabric of the building, you can’t help but be deeply affected by its unique atmosphere. Looking down from the long gallery through the leaded windows which have been contorted by hundreds of years into waves and which in places bow outwards, I almost expected to see riders returning from some wild mission, bringing news to the lord of the manor of some recent skirmish beyond the walls of the deer park which surround the hall.

Haddon owes its extraordinary atmosphere to having been almost completely unaltered for over two centuries, and an early twentieth century restoration of unparalleled delicacy. Unwilling to alter the medieval kitchen, John Manners (9th Duke of Rutland) and our great restorer, had modern kitchen built in an outbuilding and devised a tunnel with an insulated cart to bring hot food into the Hall.

The current owner Lord Edward Manners (The hall has been in his family since it was build 900 years ago.) asked Arne to help to reinvigorate the gardens back in 2008. The resulting planting subtly pays homage to the history of the Hall while feeling thoroughly modern.

In the studio at Allt y bela, behind the little stove the wall was painted with vines and flowers, perhaps it was a modern reflection of those ancient frescoes in the chapel at Haddon, perhaps it was just a coincidence. When my mind casts back to that day, years ago, sat on the long wooden bench at Allt y bela listening to Arne speak eloquently and passionately about the beauty of Haddon my mind will link to that extraordinary, dream like hall, sat proudly in the mist above a busy little river in that wild corner of Derbyshire.

It’s a Saturday morning a few minutes before opening and black clouds like palls of smoke scud across the heavy grey sky. I’m sat on the back steps by the blue pond determined to keep the sprinklers on right up until the last second. Alison our chief propagator and all round plants supremo has been in for several hours already watering the multitude of pots, containers and ailing beds, compared to her dedication I’m a part timer. What we have in common this morning is a sympathy for the garden that’s hard to put into words. I suppose it comes down to this; if the garden isn’t happy, neither are we.

There’s an almost infallible indicator by which you can tell how I’m feeling about the garden at any time; if I’m happy that the garden is happy I’ll be posting on instagram! It isn’t that there isn’t plenty of beautiful moments to post when I’m not posting, it’s that the gardens stress seems to be directly wired to my blood stream and I feel it.

At the moment what would make the whole situation better is rain and plenty of it.

I’ve always been quite an emotional person and in gardening I’ve found an occupation in which feeling deeply is generally an advantage. True happiness isn’t an emotion that can be sustained, it can only really be glimpsed in moments and that’s fine, I’m not expecting to feel happiness and contentment 24/7, I do and I will keep perusing it however.

Happiness in the garden, for me at least, is the combination of the elements of nature and the gardened elevated by the sublime, the sublime element is usually light, but it might be the blue flash of a kingfisher in flight reflected in the flowing river, or something else which momentarily reminds me of the miraculous nature of my existence, and its ephemeral quality.

Whilst plants around me suffer and die, a little part of me will continue to suffer with them. There are cycles to everything in life and my current discomfort will end, like the garden I will breathe a sigh of relief when the rain returns and once it has had time to work its magic and awaken the latent energy in the garden my own latent energy will return and our strangely intertwined journey will continue.

I was talking to Jo and Louisa, two of our Iford volunteers about weather, outside of the auditorium at Bath university where we’d just listened to a talk by Charlotte Molesworth. It was a couple of days after a storm had passed through the country toppling trees, bringing flooding and power cuts and I was speaking about the lack of serious damage in the garden, and about my love of weather of all kinds, for which, it seems, I’m a bit unusual!

Now I love weather, I don’t really mind what weather, so long as it’s changeable and unpredictable. We are lucky here in the South West of England to be blessed with a fairly benign climate. Our summers are never too hot, nor our winters too cold, the one constant however, is change.

A month or so back, when autumn should have been in full swing we had a period of about two weeks where the weather seemed to stand entirely still; every day was exactly the same, it was mild but not warm, overcast with leaden skies and completely still, hardly a breath of wind stirred. I hated it, it made me feel uneasy, as if the earth had ceased to spin. Talking to my excellent colleagues at Iford I was genuinely astonished to find that my feelings were not shared by any means. This strange dearth of weather had come off the back of a very wet spell and the general feeling seemed to be relief that a calm spell of weather made gardening easier.

I think part of what I enjoy about gardening is the utter, mind boggling futility of an endeavour where you set yourself up to battle against the apparent chaos of nature. Gardening is an act of hope, a act of devotion to the creation of a moment of designed artistry in the most dynamic of settings. It’s an act that must be constantly repeated until injury, infirmity or death, there is no battle to be won, only toil, but what an office! What a view!

The rain, the wind, the snow, the burning sunshine, it reminds you that you are alive, and insignificant. I find that so reassuring. It’s not that what we do doesn’t matter, it’s that it’s very impermanence means that it must be appreciated now, there is no tomorrow, not in any real sense, we have to find the joy in the moment.

For me, getting buffeted around by the wind is like the gentle hand of a parent steering a child towards their destination. The lashing cold rain that stings your face in winter are like the stinging tears of frustration. The gentle warm sun of spring is the embrace of love itself. When the sun breaks through the clouds to cast long elegant shadows across the garden, to light the flowers it sends my heart soaring, sometimes I could weep with joy at it, it’s magnificent.

When the wind ceases to blow, the sun refuses to shine and the rain fails to fall, I feel bereft, I feel left behind, abandoned. I don’t particularly care about good gardening weather, I think I just want to feel like a part; however tiny, and insignificant, of this vast, dynamic, unfathomably complicated, beautiful world.

It was a cold, dark, miserable day in February of this year when Gardeners World came to film at Iford. As a gardener it’s frustrating when things beyond your control crop up to throw a spanner in the proverbial works, we really should get used to it, after all, nature is reliably unpredictable!

The approach I took was to try to second guess the shots that might look good on film and focus on making those look as presentable as possible given the time of year. In many ways Iford is a great subject for filming in the winter; it has a strong architectural framework that is complimented by a layer of evergreen planting which in summer is eclipsed by flowers, but in winter is revealed as the bones on which the high horticulture relies.

The small team from Gardeners World couldn’t have been nicer, they were humble, kind, thoughtful, respectful and professional. In a way that’s what I wanted to write about.

A garden is a stage, an interactive work of art. We help to provide the canvas on which a little piece of your life is played out. We aim to make it a good one. For me, in a perfect world the hand of the gardener is unseen, I don’t want the garden to look like hard work, irrespective of the reality.

The reality is that all of this talk is irrelevant without action and as a head gardener I am almost completely reliant on the team of people I have around me. If I’m doing my job then I should be fostering the skills of those around me. What you will see on TV is not my work, it’s Zoe’s spectacular rose training, it’s Tim’s faultless topiary, and it’s Alison’s inspired planting. This year Lamar’s mowing prowess has been added to the talented team. Underpinning that is generations of tenacious, inspired and mundane work by gardeners before us.

Two more groups I must mention; firstly we have had teams of volunteers who have made it possible to drive the garden forward in ways that we couldn’t manage without their help. I’m hugely grateful to everyone who gives and has given their time freely to help us with the garden, it’s a great gift which I am humbled by.  Incidentally most of the garden team is comprised of volunteers who became gardeners here.  Secondly, I’ve worked in a few gardens over the years and all of the good will, hard work and inspired ideas come to nothing if the garden owners are not passionate about the garden, and it takes real passion for a garden to thrive. At Iford we talk for hours about everything from planned succession in the tree belts, to the subtleties of colour graduation in a particular tulip variety, and it’s through shared obsession that we aim to enhance this wonderful inheritance and do all we can to avoid losing the magic that makes Iford so special.

If this is starting to read like an Oscar’s acceptance speech, then I apologise, but the truth is that, while it was wonderful to get the opportunity to talk to Joe on camera, I feel that my place is really behind the scenes, I’m quite happy there. If the garden team was a band I see myself as the drummer, I’m there to set the rhythm, to drive the garden forward whilst letting the rest of the team shine. I’m not immune to the odd drum solo though I must admit.

We take speech for granted, it’s something that is so natural to us, it’s how we communicate our views of the world to others, it’s how we connect to others, when that doesn’t seem to function correctly it can feel very isolating.

I was already a rather small and weedy child so I was never likely to find an outlet through sports or team games. Instead I escaped down to the brook which ran through a wood below my childhood home and there I found a world which didn’t require my voice at all. I watched the little fish in the stream, the bugs, saw the seasons come and go, the light and the weather change.

As I grew up I’d often find myself listening far more than I spoke, looking and observing, the stammer acted as a wedge between myself and others. Looking back I feel like it was my speech impediment that shaped me as a person and as a gardener.

Words are so incredibly important to express the way we see and feel, but those words don’t have to be verbal, they can be written. Discovering the joy of reading in my early 20’s completely shifted my outlook, writers can transport you through time and space and set you down in a different body, a different reality altogether. More recently photography has been a way for me to express what I see and feel in another non verbal way.

I feel like I’ve found my voice now, my stammer has faded over the years as my confidence has increased, but even if it hadn’t I feel like there are other equally strong ways to communicate.

I hope I still listen and observe. Learning to express myself and the way I see the world without relying too heavily on speech are all skills I use in the garden everyday. I think developing that stammer when I was three years old helped to make me the person I am, I think it was a gift, albeit a strange gift

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An echoing roar envelopes the valley and the trees are suddenly pushed into unfamiliar shapes and attitudes, across the meadow the grass moves as waves on a choppy sea. The wind has suddenly amplified and I’ve been scurrying around collecting my tools and bags of waste listening carefully for the sudden crack of a limb which spells disaster. I should really be inside but I’m drawn back into the tumult, every animalistic sense heightened, nerves jangling, screaming - seek shelter, and yet, like a moth drawn to a flame I’m drawn back.

Yesterday we spent in preparation for the storm. The colonnade has been chained down, not to hold it fast against the wind, but rather to break the harmonic waves that can build up in it until it collapses. This isn’t an idle fear, the colonnade has fallen once at least in living memory. As I watch it now I look for movement in the chains, any changes in tension that may spell trouble.

The day started so well, blue skies and little wind, we’d had plenty of warning of this storm and we knew what it might mean for the garden, tracking its progress towards our shores, hoping that it might alter course or lose some of its power.

The wind here is fickle and unpredictable, blowing hard from the east before sweeping around to the north west and then back to the south, the reptilian core of my brain is again urging me to seek shelter, hunker down, stay low and out of sight, I think I should heed its warning.

The excess of weather reminds me that spring is about movement. Everything seems to be in perpetual movement after the comparative calm of the winter. Like a grand symphony orchestrated just out of reach of our comprehension. It feels that the whole landscape is alive beneath my fingertips. The shiver that catches me unaware and runs down the back of my neck as the sun slips behind a cloud seems to awaken in me the pressing need to complete whatever outstanding winter work I have and to steel myself for the veritably orgy of growth that is being unleashed.

My day has not been a glamorous one; I’ve been digging out brambles in the spring garden, work which, I hope, will pay dividends later when I would otherwise watch on in horror as finger thick canes of prickles waved across the grassy paths.

Spring isn’t always temperate, it’s not always elegant, but it is a grand movement sweeping through the gentle valleys and hills of the land, transforming all before it.

This winter is different here, for so many reasons; the uncertainty and the quiet.

Yesterday barely a breath of wind stirred through the gardens as if the world had inconspicuously come to a halt. Today a biting wind has returned setting me shivering and the gardens in motion.

Down at the very end of the arboretum the snowdrops are in full bloom beneath a brooding sky as clouds scud across the treetops. I’m back repairing tree guards in the arboretum: more signs of our phantom visitor.

In ten acre field beyond the garden where the ground drops steeply into another valley a small flock of well insulated sheep regard me briefly. Many of our own small flock have been getting stuck in the brambles recently which had meant rescue trips up and down the valley.

On the far side of ten acres, a white figure is visible at the woodlands edge. I set off for another sheep rescue when I’m stopped in my tracks, as the shape resolves itself, I see that it’s not a sheep

at all, a fine set of antlers, a long graceful neck and stately head with a look of unconcerned majesty; it’s the white stag.

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