Five years ago my wife and I found a house to raise our young family.

Following the death of its old owner, a charming run down cottage revealed itself behind a giant old elm.

The old man was a botanical biologist, the mature garden his laboratory. We’d never had a garden before. This was some garden, a splendid, English garden with meandering sandstone paths and tiered rock ledges

My wife slowly adopted caretaker role of this rare and mature oasis, bringing inside orchids, lilies and leaves to display in vases. The imperfect curves, subtle tonal changes, balance and form of these specimens would have been lost to my younger self, the self who assigned gardens and flowers the domain of old souls, yet here I was completely transfixed and inspired.

As the flowers locked in my gaze, they took shape as gold, silver, platinum and palladium forms on paper, where they will hold their form beyond my own years and well beyond their transient splendour.

A few months ago, a man in his sixties drove down our driveway to see his childhood home. He was the biologist’s son. His eyes filled with tears as he saw the garden, still intact, flourishing, the house restored, and two young boys, my sons, running barefooted along the sandstone paths.