Garden still the cat's whiskers

ARE you familiar with Gertrude Jekyll’s topiary cat?

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Yes, I know it sounds like a Seventies prog rock album but actually it’s just what its name suggests: a yew hedge trimmed to look like a verdant feline of phenomenal proportions.

Gertrude Jekyll, as this week’s National Trust show explains - for the benefit of thickies such as me - was a pioneering garden designer, living at a place in Surrey called Munstead Wood.

In her lifetime (1843-1932), she designed more than 300, giving each a kind of managed informality.

Turning one of her own property's shrubs into a blinking enormous green cat was, it seems, a rare touch of whimsicality on Gertrude’s part.