“The Bee Garden, Harlow Carr”

With the crunchy shale pathway through a profusion of flowers suitable for our beloved bees, this garden inside a garden is both pretty and educational.

Depending on the time of day, or day of the week, a visitor will find it tranquil, as shown here. At other times it's full of triumphant cries of excitement when something's spotted by eager young eyes.

Harlow Carr Gardens, run by the RHS, is on the edge of the city of Harrogate in Yorkshire. Both keen gardeners, myself and my mum are frequent visitors.

The gardens are large, and filled with fantastic perenial borders that have been cleverly planted for interest all year round. It's an artist's paradise, of course.

I've made many sketching trips here. I was overwhelmed by the richness of the place to begin with. Then I began seeing paintings everywhere and I've filled several sketchbooks with ideas for garden art.

Making this painting took several trips to the garden, a few photographs, and umpteen pencil sketches. Back in the studio I made a small preliminary painting because I'd not made a lot of colour studies on location (I wasn't quite the seasoned outdoor painter I am today).

Garden paintings need a different focus and approach to other landscape art, and I've been a bit wary of tackling the subject.

As someone who's been brought up by a gardener, I'm a bit of a stickler for getting the plants right. I'm sensitive to their habit of growth and the many subtle differences in green. Of course knowing too much can work against you, because you get so involved in the detail that you spoil the bigger picture (pun intended).

With the RHS, there's also the danger they'll rework what you're hoping to, or have, painted. I was just about ready to paint the dancing hares, when… puff, they were gone! Sigh.

But then, if making art was easy, I'd have given it up years ago!