TRUE COLOURS

Do gardens need a carefully considered colour scheme, or are they better when a mix of spontaneous, clashing colours come to the fore? Alice Vincent is undecided

- Alice Vincent

When Barack Obama was having a particularly trying day, he would apparently often fantasise about abandoning the White House for Hawaii, where he would open a T-shirt shack that only sold white T-shirts in size medium. I have little in common with the former US President, but I too entertain a T-shirt-based fantasy: making a small run of ethically produced shirts that read: 'Colour schemes are for Monty.

Is it the ultimate gardening in-joke? I think so. It's not of my own creation. A couple of summers ago, while despairing at the motley collection of orange, yellow and pink flowers that appeared in the first bed I'd ever planted, a friend sympathised. "Don't fret about it," she said. "Colour schemes are for Monty."

Monty, of course, being Don, the Gardeners' World host and custodian of a couple of acres filled with a dozen different gardens, each with their own meticulous colour scheme. In this instance he's a by-word for Proper Gardeners: ones whose beds and pots are an elegant cohesion of carefully chosen tones, who never get distracted by a lurid impulse purchase or find a rogue red poppy standing tall among a sea of violet blooms.