I am increasingly being asked how to create a vegetable plot or incorporate a wildlife area within the garden. A sign of the times as we are constantly being encouraged  to protect our environment  and grow our own vegetables so that we can eat healthy zero-air-miles produce with 100% satisfaction.

Runner beans in pots, letuuces in the borders and tomatoes in hanging baskets.

It all looks so tempting and easy in seed catalogues that are full of pictures of perfect cauliflowers and bunches of gleaming carrots. But then we get disheartened when the lettuces are decimated by slugs and the promised heavy crop of juicy red tomatoes either get blight because it is too wet or never ripen because there is no sun.

It seems so much easier to give up - throw a handful of slug pellets around the now lace-leafed lettuces and go down to the supermarket.

Don’t. Persevere. You’ll get there in the end and the rewards are well worth it.

This is where the wildlife bit comes in and it’s a question of balance. Don’t be too tidy in the autumn, leave piles of leaves and bits of wood for the over-wintering insects as well as stems and seed-heads - local birds and small predators will soon discover that your garden is a 5 star Michelin restaurant and will come clamouring to eat the aphids and slugs.

But let’s forget about ‘doing our bit’ for the environment for a moment and think about ourselves…

The garden can be the one place to escape into away from the current daily stresses and doom mongers. Even at this time of year it can be quite calming to sit in a sheltered corner and feel the winter sun on your face, to see the first aconite and snowdrop appear, listen to the birds chattering about spring promises and breathe deeply the fragrances of those winter flowering shrubs.

Yes, it may be both beneficial and rewarding to grow you own vegetables, have that wildlife area and be ecologically correct, but I do feel that it is equally important to create the perfect haven where you can relax, be proud of your little patch of our planet and forget about everything you were supposed to be remembering.