Everything you need to know about trees and shrubs

SOMETIMES, it is difficult to remember how we functioned before the internet took over the way we garden.

- Charles Quest-Ritson

Google the name of a plant today and, 10 seconds later, you know how to grow it and where to buy it. If you do not know its name? Google a picture and up comes its name in both Latin and English. Life for gardeners today is much easier than it used to be.

I was interested in gardening from a very early age. My pocket money was spent on seeds from Woolworths and the cash that decent uncles sent me for my birthday was splurged on tulip and daffodil bulbs. My parents and grandparents were shrub-gardeners—we had herbaceous borders, an orchard and a kitchen garden from which the gardeners seldom emerged—but ornamental trees and shrubs furnished the five-acre woodland garden where we tended to walk. By the time I went to prep school, I knew the names of perhaps 100 magnolias, rhododendrons, azaleas and camellias. When I acquired my own first house —a modest three-bedroom cottage with no more than one acre of greensand—I naturally turned to trees and shrubs to furnish the garden.