This garden came about because I won a professional competition organised by the Society of Garden Designers together with the Association of Professional Landscapers to design a garden for Bradstones at the RHS Hampton Court Flower Show under the title of 'The Traveller's Garden'.

I took inspiration from the Walter de la Mare poem 'The Listeners' ("Is there anybody there said the Traveller, Knocking on the moonlit door"). The poem's moody atmosphere and sense of 'things being not what you think they are' gave me an opportunity to explore the creation of mood within gardens. The garden was also inspired by a Rothko painting which gave me the idea of creating a continuous path around the garden from which there was no entry and no escape.

Elements of the poem were interpreted to create features such as the three columns (the 'listeners') and the yew "dark stair, that leads to the empty hall" while the "moonlit door" was an opening within a light Travertine wall that led into woodland with larch trees and the "grasses of the forest's ferny floor".

The planting had drifts of Molinia Strathenquelle running throughout; this is a grass that manages to be both quite stiff and quite airy at the same time. It was a plant that you barely noticed amongst the more showy or pretty flowers, and yet it gave both movement and substance to the whole.

If you're wondering why Rachel de Thame has her shoes off, it was the day before judging, it was muddy, and I had white paving - need I say more!