Sugar high

When contemplating trees to blaze a trail in a garden, there is nothing sweeter than the sugar maple, says Toby

- TOBY BUCKLAND

I ONCE worked on a TV show about star signs. After consulting her almanac, the resident astrologer told me that the alignment of the planets on my birthday was "very, very auspicious" - but only if I had been born in the morning.

Curious to find out more, I looked up what 'auspicious' meant, then got straight on the blower to my mum who, during the ten hours of labour, would surely have looked at her watch. Sadly, she hadn't. All she could remember was that it was dark, meaning my astrological quest for auspiciousness came to a dead end.

However, I did learn something else from that show. Librans like me have an affinity with maples. Apparently, it's our tree. So, when a friend asked me to plant a few trees to fill gaps in an ornamental woodland, perhaps my choice of sugar maple was written in the stars?