The garden is littered with tea-cups abandoned in icy showers. Muddy trails lead along the paths, up the steps to the front door, and through the house to the phone. Leaves swirl fitfully, undecided where to settle. Hands are chapped.

Frost-covered rose hips

The only thing I envy the seriously rich (apart from real linen sheets), is the space to make a Winter Garden. Only to be visited in midwinter, this would be hidden by high walls and paved in mellow sandstone. There I would sit, in the low sun, beside a malachite table, eating Gentlemen's Relish sandwiches and drinking jasmine tea. Unseen gardeners would work overnight, bringing fresh pots of white hyacinths and paperwhite narcissi.

There would be an ancient specimen of wintersweet in the centre, huge tubs of camellias, mimosa on the south-facing wall, witch hazels galore, countless hellebores and carpets of Cyclamen coum. The rare, Christmas-flowering daffodil 'Cedric Morris' would be there by the hundred. Lonicera fragrantissima, the December-flowering honeysuckle, would scent the air.

Witch hazels (Hamamelis), long admired by Gardeners with Taste, have a major drawback. When their bare branches are wreathed in funny little twisted, fragrant flowers, they are indeed special, particularly if seen against a dark evergreen background. But their summer leaves are second-rate; blood will out, they are first cousin to the ordiary hazel. As for the winter honeysuckle, dreamy as its flowers may be, its summer appearance is moth-eaten, the leaves a dullish green. These two shrubs would be all the better hidden away in the Winter Garden proper.