This makes it sound like I’m some kind of doormat, and allow myself to be dictated to. I don’t. I have strong feelings about all the gardens I do but I also respect the fact that it’s my clients and not me who will have to live in the garden once I’ve moved out, and therefore some of their whims at least must be pandered to. There’s no point, however, going head-on against their more unreasonable demands. Or at least, that’s not my way of doing things. I find it much easier to insinuate, to circumnavigate, to generally talk people round. So much the better if, at the end of a long process, my clients emerge thinking that the whole garden is the result of their own fantastic illuminations… the seeds of which are lovingly planted in their heads by me. (I guess this is, in part, a cover-my-back mechanism: when, afterwards, they then decide they don’t like something, it’s so much better if the idea seems to have come from them and not me. Naturally, I’m perfectly willing to accept thanks and gratitude for all the things that they do like…)

And then of course, there’s the bureaucratic side of things. Many variations-on-projects (pool/no pool? car park/no car park? big paved area for parties/big grassy run for dog?) down the line from the start of my designing a garden for an adorable 1950s beach house near Rome, we finally came up with The Plan. Only to find that the local council had changed its rules and pools had to be at least five metres from perimeter fences. In this little garden, that would mean that wherever you put it, part of the pool at least would have to be in the living room. Back to the drawing board.

Usually, the weather puts a halt to your best intentions for some part of the year – not on the coast near Rome, maybe, where the micro-climate means you can plant whenever, but up in the Umbrian and Tuscan hills, definitely. Frozen earth generally means that things grind to an infuriating halt around this time, sometimes for a couple of months. But not this year. Whoever heard of rolling out turf in January? But that’s what I’m doing, in two gardens in Tuscany, with a slight tremor (it could freeze, it could snow…) but forecasts, barometers and just the spring-in-the-air feeling tell us that there’s something terribly permanent about this very unseasonable season. It’s just too warm. The poor confused plants don’t know what to do with themselves. My daffodils and irises are all coming up; my garlic is looking like it should in three month’s time. There are Cocktail roses blooming against the chicken house, and my R. felicias by the front door are covered in blooms – strange little dark-pink buds emanating the same heady felicia perfume.

Which brings me back to my patchy garden. It suddenly dawned on me, as I did battle with weeds in the aromatiche bed in front of the kitchen during the summer, that making progress meant making more work – aka upkeep – for myself… a convenient excuse for slowing down. One day, I keep repeating, when we move up to Umbria permanently, I will turn the place into a show piece. Really. Honest. But for the time being, I am limiting my ambitions, and derive extraordinary – perhaps rather pathetic? – pleasure from my occasional bits of hardscaping: some new steps and a neater arrangement for tap and hose etc is my latest triumph.

One thing that I would like to get done, however, before real spring makes its way to Umbria, is my vegetable garden. Poor old signor Augusto, who fills my fridge all summer with the left-overs from his orto in the neighbouring field, may not, I fear, last much longer. His cataracts are getting worse (which may explain why he drove his Renault 5 into my storm drain over the summer and we had to heave it out for him – but doesn’t explain why he still has a license) and he’s very doddery. What’s more, he seemed to forget, last summer, to grow anything much except fennel and cabbage. And I don’t like cabbage. Well, not in one vast- exploding-cabbage-per-day quantities anyway. But quite apart from supplies from that quarter drying up, I simply want my own vegetable garden, and I want it to be a picture. If I only manage to get that (plus a functioning watering system for the grass) done between now and June, I will be a happy gardener.

Part of that vegetable-garden process will be making new compost boxes. My old ones are fast becoming compost themselves. Last weekend I lifted the two layers of thick black plastic, pinned down on all sides by heavy lengths of wood, from the top and there in the middle of the slime and potato peelings was one, perfect wild boar hoof print. Just one. Right in the middle. I have rejected the possibility of the boar removing the plastic covering then putting it and its bits of wood back neatly when he’d eaten his fill of the scraps and left his mark. I am now trying to imagine the contortions he must have performed to place that one print in that particular place. But even with my wild imagination, I’m having some difficulty.