Astilbe

I really don't give the home garden anything like the attention it needs and deserves and it shows this neglect in various weeds and shrivelled plants.

However, where I fail to grow one of my favourite plants in the glorious soil and mild climate at the cottage on Arran, it thrives up here on the exposed hill in clay-soil North Lanarkshire.

When we moved in here in 1976, the builders had left a heap of topsoil and a lot of mud: in those days a new house didn't necessarily have a landscaped/grassed plot. The worst bit was the patch where the red ash of the so-called driveway met the mud of the back "garden" (ha!) so I took little pleasure in slinging a few plants into that bit of ground.

Such is the irony of gardening that soon it was my favourite part of the garden and remains so today, with a flourishing pink astilbe, so much lovelier than its begrudging wee relative in the sunny border at the cottage! Almost worth being at home to see it!