"You mean you haven't got one?" he jests, before explaining that it made economic sense to buy rather than hire because he used it so often. Here's the businessman in action, always weighing up the economics, not afraid to work in the muck to keep making the brass.

His pale blue eyes are inscrutable but there's something instantly likeable about the man, despite the knowledge that some of his business interests lie in less-than-savoury directions. Maybe it's because he's very down-to-earth that he has an instant appeal, maybe it's because he's quite prepared to have a joke at his own expense and explain some of his foibles. Maybe it's that, at the heart of it all, he's a genuinely nice guy. David Gold has set aside a whole afternoon for Surrey Life magazine. But it's obvious from the outset he's on edge. Surprising, since we're on his home territory, sitting in one of his favourite rooms in a beautifully restored house euphemistically called "The Chalet," set into the Surrey Hills.

He half-shields his eyes with his hand as he's answering questions, weighing his words very carefully, cautiously, unsure he's expressing himself eloquently enough and excusing his lack of education. As if it matters. I'm talking to a man who is currently 79th on the Sunday Times Rich List, whose family businesses, run with his brother Ralph and daughters Jacqueline and Vanessa are valued at £495 million. He flies helicopters and aeroplanes and owns both, has a brand-new Bentley in the garage, a football club to his name, and a fleet of Lear Jets at his command. His education has been at the sharp end of life and in short, he's been busy doing things other than polishing his vocabulary. But don't get the idea he's a barrow boy, or a successful Del Boy Trotter figure. Anyone being snobbish about David Gold or who sniffs at the way he's made his millions take note. There's something very genuine about the man. His true worth lies not in his millions, but in his lack of pretence.

A real Cockney, born in Stepney within the sound of Bow Bells, he's chosen to make his home in the Surrey Hills partly out of convenience, partly because he fell in love with what was, when he bought it 13 years ago, a dilapidated Victorian house that needed total renovation. His architect suggested he should demolish it and rebuild further up the 50-acre site so he could take advantage of what are spectacular views and to save himself the cost of piecing together what was a long-neglected property.

"It would have been cheaper, as it turned out," he smiles. But David Gold doesn't take the path of least resistance. Over two years cornicing was matched and replaced, floor tiles copied and re-laid, slating recycled and reused and marble fireplaces either restored where possible or exchanged for something of a similar period. The whole is a house that is large enough to accommodate his needs but not enormous, full of original and authentic detail, showy enough to entertain in and to impress but not too ostentatious and altogether comfortable enough to call home.

David Gold is a curiosity. He has small hands and feet and he's not a tall man. He's well groomed, not quite the polished gentleman, but certainly gentlemanly, not a sharp dresser, but very dapper. He sports diamond-initialled cufflinks and a belt with DG on it, but he explains this is a practice he started years ago to ensure people didn't call him Ralph. He turns his sartorial taste into a joke, stating that he doesn't mind fashion designers Dolce & Gabbana using the idea for their businesses. He's unlikely to dress in high fashion himself, his suits are made by a local man who "comes in" though he confesses a weakness for ties - he has more than 200 and always greets the gift of a good tie with enthusiasm. He assures me he cuts his own fingernails when I ask if he has them manicured and laughs and shakes his head when I ask if he's a keep-fit fan or if he swims every day in his beautiful indoor pool.

Here's a man, feminist critics might argue, whose fortune has largely been made through selling erotica. But accusations that his businesses exploit women are wide of the mark. He employs two of the most powerful businesswomen in the country at the helms of his empire. He speaks of his mother Rosie, "Ninety-one going on 50" with the greatest admiration, respect and love - she runs a pensioners' bingo session at Birmingham City Football Club and goes to the home matches. He jokes that if he slips down the rich list she urges him to work harder. He names Margaret Thatcher as someone he'd love to have dinner with (along with engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel and transatlantic flying ace Charles Lindberg) and has forged a friendship with Delia Smith of cookery and Norwich City Football Club fame. They share a love of their respective football clubs and struck an unheard-of "loser takes all" deal when they played off for a Premiership place a few seasons ago, both reckoning that the winner would be financially secure for the following season while the loser would need the additional revenue.

I can't detect any of the steeliness I'd have thought essential to achieve such enormous business successes, so he's either a great actor or a really nice guy. Maybe it comes out when called upon and here there's no need, or maybe it has softened with age. Either way, the man sitting before me is confessing to being a pussycat and I can readily believe it. We're in what used to be his television room. It contains a desk, several trophies, a sofa and armchairs, a coffee table, a beautiful fireplace, brought over from France to replace an irreparably damaged original, lots of photographs of his daughters and "His Lesley," more of whom later, and it now operates as the nerve centre of his business empire when he's at home. Though he's not far from the £12 million Gold Group International headquarters at Whyteleafe he likes to keep his finger on the pulse and there's a stack of papers to sign on the coffee table. David confesses he never could get comfortable in his oak-lined study, which is downstairs away from the soft furnishings of the main living area. Too remote and austere for his taste, he used to collect his papers from the study and take himself upstairs to the comfort of this little lounge.

But don't get the impression this man is a soft touch or can't cope with the hard life. He's vociferous on some subjects, anti-Semitism among them, thumping his fist into his hand as he makes a passionate point before moving on to tackle people who demand their rights without accepting their responsibilities. Surely that's noblesse oblige? The nobility don't have a monopoly on such highbrow notions. True Cockney boys share the sentiment, it seems.

You can make assumptions about what drives such a man. Maybe his 30-year-plus bust-up with his father, maybe the pain of seeing his mother work herself into the ground to make ends meet. He stresses that he doesn't like to analyse why he drives himself so hard, he'd rather just get on with things.

"I would rather have had a life of strawberries and cream and a nice warm fire and a comfortable bed, but I don't dwell on romantic notions," he says. "I wanted to be successful."

He suffered both tuberculosis and dysentery as a child and the worst sort of grinding poverty in childhood with a philandering father in and out of prison and a mother who scrubbed floors and traded cards from her front room. He was bombed out of school not once, but twice, during the war but there was no-one at home to educate or look after him in the interim, since his mother was out at work. One of the bitterest pills to swallow came when his talent for football, recognised by West Ham, was stifled by his father's refusal to sign his apprenticeship papers for the club. David knew it represented his ticket out and that it was an opportunity lost - he has resented it forever. He finished an apprenticeship in bricklaying - at his father's orders - and left the trade. And he has hardly spoken to his father in the last 30 years.

David started working life as a boy; trading buttons outside his mother's house from trestle tables pitched on the concrete in front of the window. From there he also sold floral garlands, undercutting the local Woolworths by a few pence. At the age of 21 he went into the bookshop business with his brother Ralph, selling a motorbike and borrowing a little to buy the lease. It wasn't all plain sailing and business wasn't booming when his brother's van broke down, prompting a decision to keep the shop open late to make up for lost sales. It proved a stroke of genius or a stroke of luck, evening trade brought in a different kind of clientele and the top shelf was suddenly cleared. David recalls making more in two hours than they usually made in a week and discovering a whole new niche market. He doesn't say what his mother thought of the venture, but by the time he was 25 he was able to buy the freehold on four new sites, all selling erotic literature. Ten years later he sold two of the properties, netted £3 million and started selling Ann Summers stock from the remaining two shops.

Shortly afterwards his daughter Jacqueline, who was all of 21 at the time, stepped in, declared an interest in running the business and turned it on its head.

"She changed the business. It was very male-orientated until 20 years ago. My daughter single-handedly changed Ann Summers from a male-dominated business into what it is today - female friendly," he says.

He is obviously so proud of both his daughters' achievements, now, but admits he had short-sightedly hoped for sons when he was younger.

"I suppose the two most disappointing things in my life were when my Dad didn't sign my apprenticeship papers and when my second daughter was born and they told me it was a girl instead of a boy," he says unflinchingly.

He is man enough to admit that his daughters proved his disappointment ill-founded. "I thought I was unlucky and I realised I was lucky," he says. "I suppose I didn't realise at the time. The world was full of people having a son followed by a daughter at the time. "I've got two stunning daughters and the great pleasure of having them in the business and seeing them evolving and reaching such achievements - it's quite stunning." While Vanessa is happy to stay in the background it's Jackie who has become a driving force in his business empire and who looks set to take over her father's interests if and when he decides to retire, though there's no sign of that yet.

David recalls: "I went to the Ann Summers party plan conference and there were 400 delegates - all female - 23 or 24 senior executives, all women, and about six men. "It was terrible," he jokes, tongue firmly in cheek.

He contrasts this with the situation in one of his other businesses, football, which remains male-dominated, "You can certainly say that of football. When I go to the Premier League meetings we've got 20 chairmen and 20 chief executives and it's a very male environment - the most powerful men in football and one woman - 39 men and one woman."

The one woman in question is Karren Brady, Birmingham City Football Club's outstanding female chief executive, credited with being a very shrewd cookie. "When she was appointed chief executive of Birmingham City everybody thought it was a publicity stunt," remembers David.

He and business partner David Sullivan agreed she could add a couple of years to her age to give herself more stature in the public's eyes, but both had realised what a talented young woman she was and how well she would do in the role. David saw in her what he had seen in his daughter - "You chaps take us lightly at your peril" is how he puts it. He is passionate about football, not only because of his former disappointment but because he's a fan. He jokes that when things go wrong at Birmingham City he sometimes finds himself thinking "Sack the chairman" before remembering he is the chairman.

"That's my danger - that I'm a fan," he says, explaining that a club run by fans isn't necessarily able to make the best business decisions. It's one of the reasons he and Delia Smith see eye-to-eye, he says, going on to tell an anecdote about flying into Stansted recently, realising she was flying in after him and of them meeting to have a hug in the arrivals lounge before driving off to their respective busy lives.

It's football, too, that gives him new heights to strive for, though he's pragmatic in seeing that not all his hopes for the club will come true - at least not for a long time. "I'm optimistic but I'm realistic," he says. He looks for similar goals in his other businesses. He'd like to see Ann Summers open its 200th store. "I'll have a party and a celebration," he says, adding that enjoying success is a vital part of business.

So what of the future for the man that seems to have everything? He's very happy to continue living in the hills outside Caterham, he says. "I'm very comfortable here and I have got so many friends here and the local community is important to me," he says. "I'm probably here forever, but who knows. Never say never."

He talks about his relationship with long-term partner Lesley, who joins him at The Chalet every weekend. He met her on a blind date seven years ago and within a very short while realised there was - here he searches for the right word - "chemistry." He laughs and walks away, half-embarrassed, but he's obviously very smitten. There are paintings and photographs of "his Lesley" all over the house. When he met her she rode a bicycle everywhere, since she couldn't afford to run a car, and though she could stop work and live a life of luxury with him, she refuses to let down her customers. He says he's tried to persuade her, and has managed to get her to cut down on her working hours over the last seven years, but I get the impression David's rather proud of her determination to retain a degree of independence too.

While he shows off the pictures and paintings and the ground and lower-ground floors of the house, pointing out details of cornicing and tiling that were painstakingly restored or researched, he peppers the tour with anecdotes against himself.

"Little things that give you pleasure, things that make you think you're a big shot, can sometimes bring you down to earth," he says, recalling how a couple came over to him in the Birmingham City FC car park recently and told him how they always saw him travelling to the club as they, too, drove along the M40.

"'How do you know it's me?' I asked. 'We always recognise your numberplate,' they replied - D-6-O-L-D'" he laughs, tickled that his efforts to have D GOLD on his car have not been appreciated - though he also owns the plate X GOLD X. He goes on to say how one of his teachers, Mrs Green, told him when he failed the 11-plus, "Gold, you'll never amount to nuffink." On reflection he's sure she probably said "You'll never amount to anything," but in his memory the word was "nuffink." He takes the photographer and me out into the gardens and on to his 19-hole golf course. The greens are immaculately mown, and it's obvious that golf is another of David's passions, along with aeroplanes and now the helicopter, and a love of wildlife. Up on one of the banks one of David's staff is herding ducks away from the pond and into their enclosure for the night. Two peacocks are roosting outside the house on a balcony, adding to image of all being perfect in David's world these days. "I'm a very fortunate person, I've been very lucky in my life."

But as golfer Gary Player once said: "The harder I practise, the luckier I get." Luck and hard work, muck and brass, they're two combinations that have served David Gold all his life. I'm sure his friends feel lucky to know the true worth of the man.

Drakes' Progress

It's been one of those days and one of those journeys. No sooner have I turned off one trunk road to avoid a traffic jam than I'm stuck on another trunk road not moving. But don't get the idea that getting to Drakes on the Pond is difficult. Halfway between Guildford and a stone's throw from Dorking it is eminently reachable and well worth a drive to.

The first sense I'm aware of as I step into the restaurant is the smell. It's faintly exotic, slightly unusual and promises much. The next thing I notice is the lightness of the décor and the beautiful flowers - lilies, orchids and roses. Then I'm met by one of the proprietors, Tracey Honeysett, who is completely unfazed by my hour's lateness and very friendly to boot. This may be the only Michelin-starred restaurant in Surrey, but it has a very unstuffy atmosphere and you sense that whether you come dressed up in your finery or dressed down after a week in the office it makes not a jot of difference to the Drakes on the Pond experience.

I've already picked up a sample menu from the foyer, something I notice other diners and a couple of passers-by also do, so I'm interested to see what chef Simon Attridge has planned for the day.

Simon joined Drakes on the Pond in December and has introduced changes to the way the menu looks, swapping the French-influenced offerings for his own style of cooking. It says much for him that despite his tender 25 years he has retained the restaurant's Michelin star and just been awarded three AA rosettes. It shows Tracey and her partner John Morris's faith in Simon that after head-hunting him from Heston Blumenthal's Riverside Brasserie in Bray they were prepared to invest £20,000 in new equipment to let him cook just the way he wanted to, influenced by the imaginative Mr Blumenthal's investigative cookery techniques. Simon's a local lad who went to school in Dorking and is glad to be back on his old patch. His parents, who run a hotel nearby, are justly proud of his achievements and not infrequent visitors.

Drakes on the Pond highlights the difference between a decent meal and a great dining experience. At a time when there are plenty of gastro pubs, bistros and chains of good-enough restaurants, the world of fine dining is pretty tough. But Tracey and John, who were both chefs themselves and sold their catering business in London to set up the venture, are not in the business for the money. They run Drakes on the Pond because they love their work and are passionate about food. It has taken them four years to achieve their current status and you can't help feeling that their hard work is just about to pay off.

A brief chat with Simon (it's hard to believe he's only 25, since his maturity belies his age), and I'm being told about the intricacies of slow cooking, something Heston Blumenthal is renowned for and something Simon has blended with traditional skills to create a second-to-none menu. It takes patience, skill and a piece of industrial equipment to braise a ham hock for 60 hours at 63C, the temperature and the timing being critical to ensure that the food is perfectly cooked without being either dry or a health hazard. But if you wonder why bother then I suggest you go and taste the results. At Simon's recommendation I start with the ham hock terrine with apple and walnut dressing and toasted pain poillane. Actually, I start with the wonderful home-made sultana and walnut bread he bakes daily, which was also being remarked on by fellow diners on the opposite side of the restaurant. It takes a real act of willpower to stop myself reaching for a second piece before my starter arrives. This only serves to build up my expectation of my meal and I'm not disappointed. My ham hock terrine looks beautifully moist and tender on its plain plate. The ham melts in the mouth, the saltiness contrasting perfectly with the tartness of the apple and walnut dressing, while the toasted pain pouillane offers a totally different texture.

I regard other diners' starters being carried by Tracey and listen to the appreciative noises from their table while I'm between courses. The smoked salmon with dill blinis, quail's egg and caviar cream looks equally inviting. While I'm waiting I watch the traffic going by on the A25 outside. I want to run out and encourage the drivers in to fill the empty tables. It's the height of the summer holidays and pretty quiet today - but don't they know what they're missing? Equally, I want to tell the people looking in through the window that the meal I'm eating is terrific and they really ought to book a table.

I've ordered confit gilthead seabream on seaweed crushed potatoes served with a sauce bois boudran and black olive oil, again because Simon has recommended it and I know the sea bream has been slowly cooked in a bath of olive oil that gently bubbles as it cooks at 49C. It lives up to its billing, the sea bream's delicate flavour has been retained and it flakes - no flake isn't the right word because it implies a dryness that simply doesn't exist in this meal, it softly falls away at the touch of my knife to reveal a pinkness that makes it all the more inviting. Its smoothness contrasts with the perfectly al dente green beans and the crushed potatoes, while the seaweed, which is brought to Simon by suppliers Chef de Chef, who make twice-weekly trips to France to pick up gastronomic specialities, adds a certain je ne sais quoi. The balance between the sea bream and the seaweed is contrasted by the piquancy of the sauce bois boudran. As a whole, taste, texture and appearance, you can tell this is a meal that has been devised by someone who knows what he is doing and delights in doing it. On to the dessert then and I ask to try the Tahitian vanilla crème brulee. It has the perfect crisp top you can bang your spoon against but don't need a chisel to get through, while the crème brulee itself is delicate, creamy and delicious.

What I can't understand, given this restaurant's location and its eminently reasonable pricing - a two course lunch will cost you just £18.50, while you can go the whole hog for £23.50, is why more local businessmen are not making the most of it at this time of day. With its crisp linen and gently understated décor it's the perfect place to impress clients and customers without making the boss roll his eyes at the expenses claim. For a ladies' lunch it is quiet and offers a great location (with parking) for an afternoon chat. There are thoughtful touches in the loo too. And with the dinner menu costing just £30 minimum for two courses it's a great place to celebrate birthdays, anniversaries or special occasions. A typical evening menu might include such mouthwatering prospects as a starter of hand-dived scallops with pea puree and pancetta cream and a main course of fillet of Scotch beef with creamed field mushrooms, braised oxtail, bone marrow and truffle sauce. I'm dreaming now...

What are the people of Surrey waiting for? I know that getting a table at the weekend in the evening is pretty difficult, but a midweek foray also gives you a chance to savour the best in modern dining at this super little restaurant. I know what I'd tell locals if I spotted them in the gastro-pubs and restaurant chains of Dorking and Guildford - go wake your senses!

Hannah Peschar

To arrive at Hannah Peschar's sculpture garden is to arrive at a destination. Led, as you are, down a wooded driveway, lined with trees and punctuated by ornamental grasses, you get a sense of place. A sense of extraordinary place. The first few sculptures greet you, a wooden bridge beckons you on, even a space as unromantic as the car park maintains the suspense and anticipation.

Leave the M25 and London's madness behind. Indeed, leave the world behind when you visit this garden. It is quite unlike any you'll have ever visited before. Not the hauntingly beautiful lost gardens of Heligan, with their sad echoes of a time forgotten, not the exotic wonders of Will Giles's astonishing tropical creation in a city suburb, nothing compares. Everything here fits. There are no jarring notes. Even the occasional discord is resolved into harmony as you walk around.

Meeting Hannah is as extraordinary as arriving at the garden. With her mid-length white-blonde hair it's hard to put an age to her. Her dress sense is eclectic and individual; green silk skirt and a flimsy net top. Her eyes are the deepest blue, inquisitive, searching and unfathomable. Nothing is given away, there will be questions answered, but first they must be asked. You know, as you are drinking all this in, the garden, the office, the person, that she is sizing up and assessing you in turn, so you feel less like the interviewer and more like the interviewee. There's a reason for this as it turns out - Hannah originally worked as a financial journalist, but the first impression is of appraisement. Then there's the unplaceable trace of an accent; where is it from? Thirty years in this country have softened and rounded it, but it's there, nonetheless.

A quick handshake and a brief conversation later and I find myself wandering the garden, alone, save for a map detailing the works I am about to come across, and the sense of anticipation has returned. Perhaps this is augmented by the threat of an electrical storm, and the premonition of much-needed (this is a garden, after all) rain. But I sense that the expectation would be there on a second, third, even twentieth visit. In fact, I choose not to follow the map but to follow my instincts. It seems more fitting, somehow. The senses are expanded by sound and smell as well as the sight and siting of the sculpted works. Anthony's planting is architectural. Giant hogweed grows stately in the garden, other plants grow to giant proportions. Of course, there's more to it than that. The existing garden has not only been added to, but Anthony has carved, and continues to carve, it out; there is clearance too, a subtle taking away to create a whole that gently invites you further into itself. To add sculptures to this landscape was visionary. At the time, more than 25 years ago, no-one else was doing such a thing. Forty minutes later I have to tear myself away to return to the office, I am supposed to be working and I must find out more about the unusual woman whose joint vision has created this astonishing collection of plants and sculpture. The planting is the on-going work of Hannah's landscape designer husband Anthony Paul. The idea of adding sculptures into it was Hannah's. There's no doubt that it is the work of a remarkable couple. To understand how their joint creativity dovetails you have to step back in time to the 1970s and their first meeting. Hannah was on a short trip to England and he happened to be one of the people she was introduced to. It was love, according to Hannah, at first sight. The fact that she wasn't free to follow that feeling, not least because she had a home and job and family in her native Netherlands, meant it was a year before the decision was made to be together. "I don't make quick decisions," she says, firmly.

Even once the nettle had been grasped there was no notion of what was to come as far as the sculpture garden was concerned. Hannah was working as a financial journalist, while Anthony was learning his trade and earning a name for himself in the world of landscape design. Time together was spent on their completely unmodernised, no-bathroomed London home, of the kind you could still buy back in the Seventies, and, of course, its city-sized garden. Their unusual approach to the house and garden has left a legacy to the current residents of the street. While inside was updated, they built their new bathroom using wood from a Gothic church, Hannah recalls, outside they gently nudged boundaries to stamp a piece of themselves on their surrounds.

"We took three paving slabs out of the pavement in front of the house and we put in an ivy and a white flowering cherry - a tiny tree - no bigger than that," she indicates with her hands. "We went back a couple of years ago and we saw that the wild cherry tree is now that big," another hand gesture from Hannah gives some idea of the size, "and that tree now has a preservation order on," she says, clearly delighted.

So how did they come to leave this first home and to find themselves living in Surrey? "There we were, we wanted to have a larger garden, but couldn't find anything we could afford," explains Hannah. "So one Sunday morning we were lying in bed reading the Sunday Times and there was this tiny for sale ad saying 'Cottage with large garden' so we asked Anthony's mother to go and have a look," says Hannah. Anthony's mother, who was living in Cobham at that time, did inspect the property while the couple were on holiday in Madeira and on their return she told them the house was "really you, go and see."

"So we came to have a look. We came down the old drive, and it was completely overgrown, they hadn't done anything to the garden in 27 years," she recalls. By this time in the interview the thunder is crashing around us and Hannah is clapping her hands in glee at the thought of the rain, though her cat is quite vocal in his disapproval of its arrival and comes in from the decking to sit on Hannah's desk. Black and White Cottage, she remembers, was set in the long-neglected former water garden of a great house, and the brook that fed the pools and ponds had silted up the bottom of the land. Hannah and Anthony knew it was for them, however, and a short while and a private mortgage agreement later - arranged with the existing owner who also had a sense that they were meant to live there - the house and overgrown garden, complete with dead elms and silted-up water features, were theirs.

It's hard to imagine how it must have looked back then or what kind of foresight Anthony and Hannah must have had to see beyond the ravages of neglect. Hannah's expression "elbow grease" belies the amount of work that went into "slowly, slowly trying to build it back into some kind of presentable order."

Our conversation is punctuated by occasional crashes of thunder and the drumming of heavy rain rejuvenating the garden. Water is the background theme to the garden which is made up of a series of millponds and leets, connected by channels. It is like the delicate left hand accompaniment on a piano, not the tune itself, but an integral and vital part of it. The house rises out of the water on the opposite bank to the car park. I can imagine breakfasting at the table on the far decking or completing a yoga session in the cool light of morning. I half-expect to be beckoned into a rowing boat to cross to the other side. But when I voice the opinion that it must be idyllic to enjoy an early morning breakfast overlooking the millpond, Hannah quickly dispels my imaginings.

"I don't often have time for breakfast," she says firmly. And after spending an afternoon with her I can confirm she is indeed busy, busy, busy. She constantly jumps up to make tea, answer phones, check the cat is okay, collect a brochure, or make a note. The conversation flits like a dragonfly from one subject to another as she remembers things she must tell me and emphasises points she needs to get across or simply remarks on something that delights or excites her. All this conversation takes place in an office in a wood and metal structure that is raised on a platform above the garden. The furniture within reflects the same sense of harmony without and it's not surprising to learn that the office was Anthony's before he built himself a new one in another part of the garden.

So how did Hannah come to know so much about her subject and what gave her the inspiration to invite sculptors to exhibit in such a magical place? Hannah explains that she had become disenchanted with her work in journalism and so, in her own words, looked back to basics, to what she liked - gardening, nature and art, though she had no background training in the subject. Approaching those first sculptors and their agents must have been difficult, I suggest. She is disarmingly honest in her reply. She got who she could get. At the time it was an unusual venture. Imagine Dutch financial journalist, an untrained and unknown in the art world, inviting a sculptor to exhibit his or her work in an open space. The work had to be definitely capable of withstanding the vagaries of British weather and had to have faith in Hannah and share in her vision. What she did have to recommend her idea, though, was the blessing of a few well-known people in the art world whom she invited to see the garden. And though the point wasn't about making money, nevertheless the venture was being set up instead her work in journalism and Hannah is quick to point out that the garden is run privately. Within two years of her sculpture garden being opened two others were being launched and now there are countless numbers around the country and beyond. What they lack, of course, is Anthony's eye for texture and the sculptural plants he has so successfully married with Hannah's eye for sculpture.

So how does it feel to live and work at the Hannah Peschar Sculpture Garden? "Great in the summer," she says, emphatically. Working includes mixing with the great and the good, with whom the garden has become well known. Morgan Freeman, Sir Richard Attenborough, Ringo Starr to name just a few, all have visited and some are regular customers. Then, equally, there are those visitors and customers who are both anonymous and moneyed as well as those for whom the purchase of a small sculpture represents a huge investment and big decision. All are welcomed equally and even if the object of your visit is simply to admire enjoy rather than purchase, you too are welcome, though there is a small entrance fee charged. One thing Hannah is clear about is that any sculptures being set in the garden have to look good in the garden. If the sculpture would look good in an urban setting, but not within Anthony's planting Hannah won't accept it in. Occasionally an artist has sited a sculpture in a place that Hannah doesn't think works and equally there are artists who are so inspired by the garden's tranquillity and prescience that they go away to create something to sit in a specific spot. There are some works that have lingered in the garden and those that Hannah is sorry to see leave. And though it may not make sense not to sell a sculpture there has been just one occasion when Hannah has flatly refused to sell to a purchaser because he just didn't have the right attitude and you sense that, having made the decision not to sell, nothing would have persuaded her to take his money. When I asked how the sculptor would have felt, had he known, Hannah shrugs her shoulders and replies that he wouldn't have minded.

So what of the future? Hannah is in her mid-sixties, something I find hard to believe until she tells me her son is 42, and living in Australia and her daughter of 39 has just married and yes, had a reception in the garden. There's also the time scale. I ask what will happen next, will one of her children take it over? She doubts it, but is keeping half-an-eye out for someone, the right someone, or the right couple, to take it over once she and Anthony decide the time to move on has arrived.

So I take my leave, still feeling a sense of awe, intermingled with tranquillity. And as I leave, a hare hops into my path, sits and stares at me for what seems a full minute then, slowly, slowly, turns and simply adds to the wonder and magic of the place.