A garden is but a moment in time

I SPENT happy hours (or was it minutes? Time moves so deliciously slowly for children) sitting behind a screen of pointed red leaves, which sprang like a fountain from a small tree in my grandmother's Hampshire garden.

- Jason Goodwin

From inside, I could watch her weeding and deadheading her way along the herbaceous border. Over a plank across a ditch lay the Borogroves, a place of dark enchantment and little daylight, where adventures might be had and camps made. The bottom of the garden was established by a post-and-rail fence, which gave onto open and endless fields full of buzzing insects. This huge kingdom could be surveyed from the kitchen sink.