PROSPECT COTTAGE, DUNGENESS

If you can garden on the shingle of Dungeness, you can garden anywhere – and the English do. Prospect Cottage stands for all the horticultural Edens in bloom across these fair lands.

With pylons striding out from the Dungeness B nuclear power plant, this is not a promising locale but in 1986, the film director Derek Jarman started a garden here. It is not only an example of horticultural tenacity, but a triumph of the human spirit; he was diagnosed as HIV positive the same year. There are no visible boundaries; it stretches for as long as he wanted it to, towards the horizon. Wild flowers, traditional garden plants and exotics are combined to create a natural effect, which can only be achieved through constant weeding, nurture and hope.