“The harsh reality of extreme weather would crush the soul of our British eccentricity” At the beginning of December, I went to bed on a Saturday night with the garden greenish, brownish and not particularly cold and woke the next morning with it undulating white under a foot of snow. The snow kept falling all day, so by Monday morning there were drifts across paths and great, white cumulus clouds of snow on all the hedges, and every branch etched with a thick, white line. There was some damage, almost entirely through the sheer volume and weight of the snow – a weeping pear split in two, a hawthorn brought down and two buddleias uprooted.
When the temperature dropped below -13ºC, the greenhouse doors froze solid and, under their deep…
