'It's like another lung - like having oxygen on tap. It makes you breathe in a different way'

Helen Maxwell's garden in rural Carmarthenshire surrounds the house that her husband (who's an architect) designed.

- LILY MIDDLETON

They moved to this large site in 2005, but Helen wasn't able to start creating her garden until 2012, once the main construction work was complete.

The garden sits in two acres of land surrounding the house, with the rest of the site left to nature. Helen takes a natural approach to all of the garden, with plants allowed to self-seed. She also has a real passion for wildlife.

What was the garden like when you moved in? 

There were just a few veg patches around the old cottage, and a few tin sheds. The previous owner only grew potatoes - we had a massive crop that first year! There was couch grass everywhere, so I had to wash the roots of everything I wanted to keep, to remove the couch grass from the garden. It was pretty much carnage to start with.

What did you do to transform the garden? 

The site was full of stones, as it used to be a quarry, so every time you put your fork in the ground, you hit a stone. A friend showed me how to build dry stone walls and I caught the bug. I never thought I'd become obsessed with finding the perfect stone! I've moved barrowloads around the site. The walls level out some areas and hold back the land.

I kept all the plants that were here, apart from the couch grass, and divided them to get as many plants as possible for free. I sowed a lot myself too, and visited a local garden centre at the start.

I have such a love for nature, thanks to my father who took me on walks as a child. I have a real passion for plants too, I salivate walking past a garden centre! So it was an obsessive need, to create my garden. The garden also has to work with the weather - plants need to survive full sun, heavy rain and strong winds. I encourage them to self-seed, then move them around. This wasn't a garden you could mastermind, because at the start I couldn't see beyond the mess that was there in front of me.