Play your trump card with an acer

In theory, it takes eight years to make a garden from scratch.

Trees and shrubs need that long to mature and metamorphose into the picture you had in your mind’s eye when you planted them.

In practice, it can take a lot longer. We make mistakes. We underestimate the size of shrubs in maturity and plant too close together, or find that there are gaps in the colour flow because things flower earlier ...