So, Chelsea has been and gone; stuff perfection, live with the burgeoning weeds, and let’s just enjoy what nature can give. Nothing on Earth can give one as much pleasure as the first ripe strawberry still warm from the sun,the swelling peapod bursting with heavenly green orbs, baby broad beans no bigger than your thumbnail, true leaf spinach mild enough to eat raw, the first tiny fragrant Epicure new potatoes eaten within a few hours of digging, tiny courgettes still with their flowers attached, lettuce picked  and eaten within the hour and tenderstem broccoli very lightly steamed and drowned in melted butter. You cannot begin to imagine the sheer sweetness of all of these vegetables, and never will experience it until you grow your own.

Add in a few scented shrub roses , such as Cornelia, pictured here, and the foaming , indestructible Crambe Cordifolia, Aquilegia, Old English Lavender, Rue, Choisya Ternata, Hemerocallis and other easy permanent perennials and you will have a true Garden of Eden.

But the serpent does still lurk here in the form of Garden Pests and diseases. That will be the subject of my next offering, after I have poured myself a large glass of wine, and gone and eaten a few of the new peas!