Raking up the glorious copper carpet of leaves beneath the huge beech tree at the historic Broad Gate, my heart skipped from autumn to spring as there, poking their green bullet noses through the still-warm earth, were the first snowdrops.

Even the daffodils are making a tentative appearance above the soil surface. I daresay they will soon be checked once the real winter weather hits us.

We have already had a taster with an October frost - a month earlier than previous years and hard enough to finish off the nasturtiums, nerines and some of those pelargoniums that I meant to bring in, but forgot.

Their loss though, is compensated by the wonderful autumn colours - from golds to copper and bronze. Reds, russets and browns. And with the bonus of a few days of low sun striking rippling shadows through the damp leaves, it really has been quite spectacular - Mother Nature has certainly pulled out all the stops this year.

So I am enjoying filling leaf bins and bags full of rainbows - but these leaves will be from gardens and not, as suggested by Toby Buckland on Gardener’s World, from the roadside. Do I really want my leaf compost to be full of sweet wrappers, Costa coffee cups, beer cans and other detritus that gets thrown out of car windows? And would the plants really be happy with a fuel-oil flavoured mulch?

Maybe I’m being picky or maybe I just care for my plants too much to risk it. I am, after all, a gardener.

(Leaves courtesy of Foldgate House)