Where do you get inspiration for the garden?
I’ve been a gardener for a long time, around 30 years, and I’ve found you have to treat each garden as unique. Every garden is hugely special in its own way. I do a lot of reading, I have lots of garden books, historical books and of course Dorothy’s journals and William’s poetry.

I blend the knowledge from the gardens I’ve worked in, and I’ve been in many varied gardens but I try to find the spirit of the place. I’m organic and no-dig and have been since I started at Wordsworth House and Garden.

Which flowers do you like best in the garden?
Blimey, that’s hard! The list is huge for me. Snowdrops are very important – a harbinger of spring. Geraniums and peonies are beautiful when in full bloom. I love red poppies in any shape or form and pot marigolds.

If you ask me about my favourite plant, it would be beech tree. In the winter, they look like wrapped cigars and the trunk looks like an elephant’s foot. In spring, it’s ephemeral. Then I’d cheat and turn it to a copper beech in summer. They also make a great natural hedge.

William loved the celandine, so I grow some up round an old tree stump to reflect his favourite plant.

What tips do you have for other gardeners?
Do not be too tidy. In the autumn, if the apples drop from our trees, we leave them for the blackbirds. As long as we explain to visitors that they’re for the blackbirds and other creatures, they are quite happy.

In the winter, we don’t cut everything back because we leave certain habitats for ladybirds and other creatures that need to survive over the winter months.

Choosing old fashioned cottage flowers and annuals because they’re rich in pollen and nectar, so consider what plants you’re putting in because some modern varieties mean they won’t feed the bumblebees.

Considering what’s friendly in your garden for the creatures you share it with. Our gardens are a shared habitat, they don’t belong to us. They do technically, but we should share them with the local wildlife.

Which is your favourite part of the garden?
In a sense, it’s the small walled garden because we have the rear garden and the terrace, but the small garden seems even more tranquil. It’s a relaxing space, but on the other hand, it’s an area with a section of lawn and when families visit, they have picnics there.

We have wooden Jenga and hoopla, so you can find them playing games. So, not only do people go and relax in there but you also find families use it as a space to sit and engage, so I quite like the fact that it’s this dichotomy of tranquil or very busy.

What wildlife do you get currently?
I know we have seven varieties of bumblebees, we probably have more because with cuckoo bumblebees it’s very hard to tell them apart, and some of the tawny bumblebees we think we might have more than one variety. We know we definitely have seven, which makes us a bumblebee-rich habitat.

We have lots of hoverflies, lots of ladybirds, including the cream-spot ladybird who is beautiful, she is brown with white spots but she’s so hard to see and she’s quite small. But you see yellow ones, you see black ones, red ones, there are lots and lots of ladybirds.

With birds, we have two blackbird families, one tends to stick in the small walled garden and one in the rear garden. The usual robins, wrens, bluetits and great tits, sometimes we get long-tailed tits and they have a family chatter – it’s beautiful to hear them. We had a massive spurge of red admirals in autumn.

You can see how change in climate is really impacting all our creatures, we grow lots of plants that are great for all of them, but we can’t control the weather.

How do you attract/look after the wildlife?
Sort of the above, in the fact of not being too tidy, the plants we grow, in a sense realising we’re sharing the space.

We grow a big border round two off the plots of golden marjoram. If you were growing them for culinary purposes as soon as the flowers started, you’d cut them back to keep the leaves fresh, but we don’t. We grow them so the flowers are there for our bumblebees, and you can hear a hum when it’s out because there’s a lot of it. It’s a place where people stop and say “have you seen all these bumblebees?”, so we don’t cut our flowers off some of our herbs.

We don’t go for culinary; we go for flowers for insects and bees. We garden in favour of the creatures, and if you are growing for culinary purposes, I’d say leave one clump of flowers for the bees.

What steps do you take to keep it ‘tidy’ whilst being wildlife-friendly?
The main paths, we try and keep them as a clear access so people can walk around. And we have benches so people can sit and stay and look at the garden. I have a secret weapon, it’s called an amazing team of volunteers who are very good at spotting things, even if I’m not in, they’re very tuned in.

It’s knowing when to let things flow over and when it’s a trip hazard and a balancing of looking at access but allowing a little bit of freedom and genuinely the majority of people love it as it is. It’s being respectful of people wanting to look round but giving space for the creatures, because we don’t garden just for two-legged in this garden.

I think the thing is as well – because we have a song thrush, we have lots of sparrows and blackbirds – is if we spot a nest somewhere, it’s letting the team here know, so we respect their privacy and don’t disturb them and we don’t tell the public where they are.

What are your future plans for helping wildlife?
All of the above. I’ve got a rich, biodiverse habitat, I don’t use chemicals, I choose my plants sensibly. Because I’ve gardened for wildlife for two decades, we do everything we can. It has to look right in a Georgian townhouse garden, so it’s being sympathetic to what the garden is, but considering the range of creatures we have.