‘It’s a perfect, formal and wild English garden’

Gravetye Manor is an influential garden in my life. We spent some of our honeymoon there in 1989 and, although it was December, it was inspiring. I realised then that I had to know more about gardens and have one of my own. Then we had a tiny courtyard in London, and it took 13 years before we got our ‘middle-sized garden’. That was quite a learning curve!

We went back to Gravetye last May for our 30th wedding anniversary. The garden was absolutely at its height and full of fantastic combinations. The meadow was full of wildflowers, covered in bees, and the borders were stacked with delphiniums. It’s a perfect, formal and wild English garden, with white wisteria dazzling in the sunset and amazing wildlife.

I got up at dawn to take photographs. The birdsong was deafening and there were pollinators everywhere. To be there at 4.30am in May, with the perfect light and nobody else around was incredibly exciting! I hadn’t taken an overcoat as I didn’t realised how cold it would be; I got completely frozen but I just couldn’t stop taking pictures!

One of the highlights was talking to Head Gardener, Tom Coward, about the garden and how it moves on. It’s not what William Robinson would have planted in 1885, but they are plants that he would have loved if he was alive today. It’s still very much the garden that William Robinson designed, and the bones of it are amazing.

I loved the plants from Gravetye’s collaboration with Sarah Eberle at RHS Chelsea Flower Show. You have dreams and think ‘I could do that…’! So I’d like to use Ranunculus acris ‘Stevenii’, a bold, doubleflowered version of the common buttercup, and I plan to put it in our front garden meadow.

I’ve only been twice, but I want to get back. I’ve seen the depths of winter and the height of summer, and now I want to see spring and autumn, too. The balance of colour is really good, it’s naturalistic but at the same time vibrant, and that's really hard to do.

■ Gravetye Manor, Vowels Lane, East Grinstead RH19 4LJ; www.gravetyemanor.co.uk.