MY garden-visiting chum and I went off to The Courts in Holt recently, having not been there for about 18 months. What a joy that place is! Large enough for a good wander but small enough not to feel too pooped to see everything. And the trees – fabulous mature specimens all around giving you a real feeling of being completely swathed by it all.

Their water lilies were looking particularly good, and as my chum said, who’d have thought that such a lovely flower would come out of such unpromising looking leaves. The pale lemon yellow were particularly pretty, although I nearly ended up getting too much of a close-up view as I ducked under a large Gunnera leaf and almost lost my footing – flashes of a crash-landing amongst them rushed through my head and I fear that I may go up like a dolphin I would come down like an elephant!

Garden visits are very important and I have not been doing enough of them lately. Not only do you find stuff that you like, but you are also made aware of what you don’t like. The avenue of stipa gigantea underplanted with alchemilla mollis and purple-flowered salvias was lovely, but the silver leaved stachys byzantina with the bright green strappy leaves of a particularly orange flowered hemerocallis (daylily) grated on my sensibilities. But we are very lucky in this part of the country to have some stunning gardens to visit and I am promising myself more trips out.

In my own garden, I have decided that this autumn is going to be a hack and slash job. I have tried several times to kill off the akeba quinata. It was a foolish mistake on my part, having been seduced by the beautiful ruby coloured boiled-sweet type flowers, to think that I could contain the monster. Nay – all the hacking back in the world has simply made it grow stronger and it’s a pain. Now don’t get me wrong – in the right place it’s a cracker – it’s just that it’s not in the right place. All the clematis down that side will need to be cut to the ground as well – including ‘Perle d’Azur’ which is looking stunning at the moment and took ages to get going, but if a good clear out is required it’ll have to take its chances. On the other side, that jasminum x stephanense has bone berserk as well – this is the one I told you about earlier when I took out one of the oldest stems down to the ground. It’s very pretty and, although I have been told that it has no scent, it does. But it’s gone bonkers so that too, will be cut right back.

The trachelospermum jasminoides has also put on growth but it is a really choice plant and has taken seven years to get to where it is so I shall be treating that one a lot more carefully.

I fear that the ‘William Morris’ rose’s days are numbered, though. Its heads are very full and too heavy for the spindly stems so they hang down all the time, more so after rain. Even though it’s a very pretty rose, I’ve had enough of it so it’s for the out.

In the rest of the garden, the herbaceous geraniums have been really good but will need lifting and splitting again this year. With so much to be done, I shall take stock of my planting altogether and change some things here and there.

I used to think that gardens were ‘done’. Wrong!