The garden is set in the wonderful countryside of the Welsh border above Tintern: countryside which has recently been seen worldwide in the television series ‘Sex Education,’ while also being the inspiration of Wordsworth’s great poem ‘Tintern Abbey’.

Veddw has been made and designed over the last 37 years by garden photographer Charles Hawes, and by garden writer Anne Wareham, who wrote ‘The Bad Tempered Gardener’ and ‘Outwitting Squirrels’. They have one day a week help from a brilliant hedge cutter.

The entrance to the garden offers a dramatic view over the clipped yew and beech hedges to the surrounding woodland, while still only showing half the garden – there are two acres of ornamental gardens and two acres of woods.

The various enclosed gardens have seats, so visitors can relax and enjoy the variety of unusual plants and planting schemes. Some of these gardens emphasise late summer flowers, some have roses, while the meadow, which is over 200 years old, is sweetest in early summer. When the flowering there is over, the sculptural lines of globes bring light and mirrors into the scene.

The Veg Plot no longer grows vegetables but is full of cardoons, heuchera and ferns. There is a dedicated hosta walk, a garden of undug ancient pasture with wild flowers and the addition of rampant perennials.

The gardens are relaxed and wildlife friendly, as the rabbit chomping testifies. A favourite part with visitors and gardeners wanting a break from looking at weeds is the black, some say sinister, reflecting pool. Anne writes about it all regularly on Substack.