Philippa Hodkinson at Lindisfarne Castle, Northumberland

Philippa Hodkinson was a ceramic artist before retraining as a gardener in 2000.

She got her first horticultural ‘break’ at Wallington, a National Trust property just a few miles from Lindisfarne. In 2002, she took up the reins at the tiny eighth of an acre Gertrude Jekyll designed garden on Lindisfarne, working two days a week and helped by a band of five volunteers.

The garden was laid out in 1911 for the then owner of the castle, Edward Hudson (founder of Country Life magazine), and, in summer, is a riot of colour and scent. The castle and garden can only be reached at low tide across a causeway.

In one sentence, describe Lindisfarne’s walled garden by Gertrude Jekyll.

It’s a little visual gem - an oasis of glorious colour and scent (in summer, at least) in the middle of a field.

What part of your job do you enjoy most?

The planting out, definitely. It’s so windy here that I have to harden off the plants while they are still very small. We grow thousands. They begin life in greenhouses at Wallington, another of the National Trust gardens in Northumberland, and they are then quickly put out in cold frames.

When they come to Lindisfarne, they are small but sturdy, and you never think they will survive - they look so vulnerable - but they do. I love that special moment when they’ve all been put into beds and handed over to nature. My responsibility is finished and I think: ‘You’re on your own now, little plants!’

© NTPL / Joe Cornish

And the greatest challenge?

The wind, sweeping in from the North Sea. Gertrude Jekyll knew what the weather was like as she visited the site in 1906 and drew up the planting plan accordingly. We follow her idea of using pea sticks to support the sweet peas - they bend with the wind and look natural.

The other challenge is to try to find the exact cultivars Miss Jekyll used. We’ve tracked down a lot through catalogues and the internet, but otherwise we go for whatever looks closest.

If you could spend a day with any plantsman or plantswoman from history, who would it be?

Miss Jekyll, of course, and I would want to ask her how she feels about having her garden restored. She might well be horrified. After all, she was an innovative, forward looking gardener, using all the latest cultivars, and here we are trawling the world for pre-1911 seeds.

What aspect of the garden pleases you most?

The response I get from the visitors. But I wish they could all be here on that one day in July when everything’s perfect - the light is right, the scents are wafting on the breeze, the wind has dropped and the sound of bees buzzing round the flowers is magical.

Interview: Jackie Bennett