The Garden: a place we all need, sometimes.

When I was nine years old, we lived in Penketh, near Warrington, which in those days was a country village. We had just moved out of Liverpool, and I was very unhappy. My Liverpool accent meant no-one understood a word I was saying, the school building was 200 years old set in green playing fields, and had around 40 pupils. I was used to 300 kids swarming around a concrete playground, half of whom were cousins. I also hated the country. The trees were too big - real trees were stunted little things in Wavertree Park, with "Littlewoods Over All" flashing neon in the background. It went dark at night. There were noises. And there were no people.

So to say I was miserable was an understatement.

At the end of our lane was a building called The Lodge. It was a large Victorian house, and had been empty for years, but the locked gate and barbed wire fence were no problem to a Scouser! Once I got inside - it was like entering a secret world. The house was beautiful, full of glorious oak panels carved into animals, birds and grapes. There was a room upstairs with bars on the windows, which I immediately decided was the place they kept the lunatic relative (I was reading Jane Eyre at the time). Hindsight tells me it was almost certainly the nursery. The two front rooms had large bay windows with built in wooden seats.

I fetched cushions and an old blanket from home, and a stack of my favourite books, and made a comfy den on one of the window-seats. It was my house. The lawn was huge, about the size of Anfield, and oval in shape with oak and beech trees lining it. The beds on the side of the drive were raised up, and planted with glossy green bushes, and the soil was covered in a beautiful green velvet moss, studded with tiny blue and pink flowers. The orchard was a riot of overgrown pear and cherry trees smothered in pink and white blossoms in spring and big clumps of gooseberry and blackcurrant bushes covering the ground.

I could describe the beauty of the place for ever. The point is, I decided to make it my garden. I read up on the plants and flowers, borrowed some shears and spent weeks cutting the Secret lawn (a small walled garden at the side of the house). I weeded, dug and pruned. For one small nine-year old girl it was the daftest most impossible project you can imagine - but what a comfort it was. I spent hour after happy hour, filling the Garden with imaginary people, discovering old statues and rainbow flowers in dark corners.

Time passed, I made friends. I joined the Pony club, the local youth club, the local gang. I went for long bike rides with my mates. And I got to love the country, and appreciate the privilege of living there. I neglected my Garden, but I never took anyone to see it - my secret place. A few years later, they tore the Lodge down. All that wonderful oak paneling went on a huge bonfire. The great beech trees were felled, the oak trees torn up, the velvet moss thrown in a skip. Then they built a housing estate. And my parents bought a house right where my walled garden was. Before they moved in, I left home for University, so I never lived there.

So to me a Garden is a Secret Place, a place of colour and movement, unexpected things hidden in corners, and most of all a place to be happy in.