AN ARTIST'S PALETTE: RUTH AND RICHARD LESLIE

When Ruth and Richard Leslie moved into their present home 11 years ago, the house had just been built and the garden was empty. To Ruth, an artist with a special interest in ceramics, the land presented a blank canvas, waiting to be transformed. Today it is a place of light, shade and colour, of winding paths, meandering streams, sweeping beds and trees of all kinds.

The garden is not the only thing that has changed. Ruth, who had a love of nature but no particular interest in gardening, has recently completed a course in the subject and has started designing gardens for others.

"I was a spiritual sort of child who would go and sit on a hill and look around me if I ever felt sad. Nature made me feel good.As an artist, nature was inspirational to me in its forms, structures and colour. The garden also brought smell, sound and life. It was all just waiting forme to discover it. As the children grew up and needed less of our last garden as a football pitch, I started to develop bits of it. When we moved here, I was very excited by the challenge."

Ruth went to shows and visited gardens open to the public to garner ideas, which she relayed to a designer. "Because the garden slopes, there was the possibility of terracing it or having different kinds of garden that connect - with a few surprises thrown in that you would happen upon as you wander through it."

The space is punctuated by three elegant Cypresses that lead the eye down the garden to the next level, and by the brilliant white trunks of some pollarded silver birches. There is a luxuriant fig and a mimosa that bursts into flower at the end of winter. "It's a mass of brilliant yellow cotton wool buds that smell absolutely gorgeous."

In the centre of garden, encircled by a low wall of old brick, is a seating area situated in a sun trap, with barbecue and furniture. Beyond is a gravel-bed streamthat burbles deliciously - and something striking yet baffling among the beds. These turn out to be tall stems topped with flame coloured teardrops of glass. "I saw something similar in a photograph and asked a glassblower if he could copy them. I wanted them to emerge from the foliage like flowers, which they do. And when the sun hits them, they reflect in the water below."

Over the years, Ruth has moved things around and experimented with new plants. "At the bottom of the garden is an area where the soil and light are not so good, so I try things out there. If they work there I know they'll survive anywhere. I want an informal look. My area of knowledge is Mediterranean plants because we have a home in the South of France and I have learned from there. I like lots of lovely grasses, blues and purples, a feathery, meadowy feel, curves, ellipses and meanders.

You will find repetition here but also variety. There is interest but also tranquillity: both are important but they should be in different places, Some would say parts of the garden are unsettling to the eye and I now know from my training that some of what we have done is not strictly correct. But sometimes I think too much technical knowledge can get in the way of creativity."

Ruth spends a couple of hours a day in the garden most of the year and far more during the propagating season. "I take lots of cuttings and put them in the gardens I design, so there are little bits of me all over the place. It makes me feel quite proud."

Does she ever relax amid the greenery and enjoy the fruits of her labours? "On a summer evening we sit in the hammock at the bottom of the garden with a drink and look back up at the house through the trees. It's a lovely view."

Barbara Elton