I’m sure that the people who now live in this lovely house don’t realise that their flourishing hedge came from a rubbish heap in Fishguard.

We moved into this house 25 years ago and knew that the unfinished thin front wall needed a privet hedge so, on our Tegfan holiday, we decided to buy the plants in a local nursery and take them home – as a kind of holiday souvenir.

We hadn’t paid attention to the fact that the ‘hedges’ in Dinas front gardens are much prettier than those on our London Victorian estate. If we had been looking for Hydrangeas, Escallonias or Fushias we would have had an amazing choice but we couldn’t find boring old privet.

Eventually, in a plant nursery on a steep road behind Fishguard I noticed some discarded privet plants, upturned on the compost heap in a corner. They were just what we wanted and the kind owner flatly refused payment.

We moved away over 20 years ago – but hasn’t the hedge done well?