I suppose the good thing about a new garden is that you start with few problems. In fact that is not quite true. There are weeds and appalling soil to tame and, in this case, the soil being grassland, a reservoir of trillions of leather jackets (root-eating grubs). Digging exposes these but though the rooks spend all day wandering across the grass they have not worked out that when I turn over the soil I want them to eat the pests.

Lily beetle have already found the garden but the latest problem was bought in – with the plant. Last spring I bought a Prunus incisa with pink flowers. It grew quite well but the rather ragged leaves worried me. This spring it flowered quite well too. But then the leaves began to grow and most of them shrivelled up. A second flush started but I can’t take the risk. I have lots of plums and some ornamental prunus planted and I just can’t risk these being infected so it had to be dug out. You can’t win ’em all!

bacterial canker, prunus bacterial canker, shot hole disease