UKTV Gardens: So you wouldn’t ever consider living abroad?
Kim: “Well I could probably create a garden anywhere but to be honest, I’m a real home girl and I love my garden. It’s the trees that we’re planting that would really keep me here if anything. We’ve been planting about 150 saplings a year for the past seven or so years. I want to create my own wood. And for me, one of the great things about growing old will be to watch this woodland mature. The thing I get excited about every winter is all the saplings going in.”

UKTV Gardens: Your garden has gained a lot of attention of late – not least in a feature in The Observer this June. Can you describe its charms to us in your own words?
Kim: “It’s a bit of a sushi box! There are compartments with different things going on. At one end, there’s a wild flower meadow with a path going through it and I love that area. There’s a bit of a forlorn vegetable garden which got rather cold-shouldered by its mum this year because of Chelsea. We’ve now also got tons of beautiful opium poppies which have infested the whole garden and really decorate the whole scene. There’s a herb garden as well and a very traditional avenue too, inspired by Rosemary Verey’s one at Barnsley House with the laburnum arch and the alliums. The key thing is that it has a really early start, with loads of winter flowering shrubs and it goes right through to the end of the year when you get all the fabulous autumn colour and then back again to the winter flowering.”

UKTV Gardens: But has it got a “view from a bridge”? Or any “water on glass”?
Kim: “(Laughs) We don’t have a bridge, no. We’ve got a nice water feature though."

UKTV Gardens: You’ve recently published a book called Gardening For Children all about getting the kids into gardening, written from your personal experiences with your own two little ones. But what about husband Hal? Does he get left out when it comes to gardening?
Kim: “No, Hal’s into it too. He does power tool stuff. He’s got an awesome strimmer and he’s developed a really good one-handed method of strimming with a can of Stella in the other hand.”

UKTV Gardens: How did your entry into this year’s Chelsea Flower Show come about?
Kim: “Richard Lucas, who I worked with, is a superb plantsman and I’ve learnt so much from him – we’ve made gardens together up in Cumbria before. So we decided to enter and I actually found out on my birthday that we’d been accepted by the RHS! We were over the moon just about getting in to be honest. Then actually working there, watching other people put their gardens together, the atmosphere of the place – all of it was just amazing. Sure, it was very tiring as we were doing 14-hour days but I learnt tons and met lots of good people.”