When we moved into Mulberry Cottage three years ago, we inherited a beautiful cottage garden full of fruit trees, flowering shrubs, honeysuckle and some beautiful perennials, but there were only a handful of rose bushes and I soon got to work rectifying this, widening borders and creating new ones to make room for some of my favourite roses.

Here’s the lovely David Austin rose, Gertrude Jekyll, whose scent is heavenly and after whom the middle sister in The Rose Girls is named.

And here’s the delicate Boule de Neige. I had to plant a second one in the front garden after Nancy the hen took a liking to the first one planted in the hen garden.

Here’s the stunning striped rose, Honorine de Brabant, nestled amongst the delicate beauty of Love in a mist. I do have a special fondness for a striped rose!

The trouble is, I never seem to have enough roses and I’m forever looking around our garden wondering where I can squeeze just one more in.

Perhaps that’s one of the reasons I wrote The Rose Girls – so that I could realise my fantasy of living in a medieval moated manor house surrounded by voluptuous rose gardens.