THE ORGANIC GARDEN: JEAN AND NEIL IRELAND

'Natural'is perhaps the bestword to describe Joan Ireland's densely-packed patch. In summer it is a classic - if unruly - English cottage garden, a riot of perennial colour, flowering fruit bushes and sprouting vegetables that are eventually allowed to go to seed. Even in deepest winter, it looks far from dead. Salad leaves of various varieties flourish everywhere - from an old sink, a discarded barbecue table and bedding plant trays.

"I find a use for everything," Joan admits. "My husband calls it obsessive: I call it recycling." When the Irelands moved to this house, 20 years ago, there was a sizeable lawn at the back, but Joan progressively clawed it back fromher slightly resentful children: now that they have flown the nest, there is only a small patch left. "And I am gradually reducing that."

Not an inch of earth in this garden remains unplanted. "I try to growfruits and vegetables that are unusual and expensive in the shops. We have interesting salads all through the winter: Japanese mustard, giant red mustard - the bigger its leaves, the hotter it gets - and landcress, which is similar to watercress. I belong to the Heritage Seed programme (which helps save rare and endangered varieties) and it's nice to get things that you cannot buy in the shops.

"I also have lots of winter squashes which I cook with, but I can't grow enough beets, carrots and parsnips for our needs, even with my allotment up near Marks and Spencer. I'd need three acres to produce all the vegetables I want as a vegetarian who loves cooking.

"Tayberries, loganberries, blackcurrants and redcurrants are all very expensive at the supermarket andmake wonderful pies and jams. We also have josta berries, which are the size of a gooseberry but black. I like to grow fruit trees because they provide blossom and shade, bright flowers which attract insects and generally tick all the boxes."

For Joan, the garden is a place of escape, mental and physical exercise and stimulation and of memories. "I have plants that have been given to me by friends and relatives who have moved away or are no longer alive. Each plant represents a little bit of that person growing here." What the garden is not is a place of repose. "I never have time just to sit in it and read a book."

Joan describes her garden as "more Picasso than Gertrude Jekyll. I throw everything in and hope it will resemble a garden. When something dies I see it as an opportunity to grow something else. I cannot leave a flower show without buying. It's my personality - I am addicted to it. Logic doesn't come into it.

"If I see a plant that I am looking for and I think it will enhance my garden and make me feel happy I cannot walk away. I would rather spend my £5 at a nursery on something that lasts months or years than on a bunch of flowers that lasts 10 days, if I'm lucky."

Everything from house and garden that can be composted is added to the mix. "Corrugated cardboard is good: the worms love the glue." No sprays or pesticides of any kind are used. "Some things are simply not in the ground long enough to attract pests and there is so much growing here that no pest could wipe out my whole crop."

That said, slugs are a perennial problem. "I come out at night with a bucket and release them 'elsewhere'. I am not saying where. I don't know where they come from. I can go out one night and pick up a quarter of a bucket of slugs and the next night there are just as many again of the same size."

Barbara Elton