I didn't realise the full extent of what gardening with other people's ideas meant when I started. I was familiar with the Trust and what it was all about. But I was coming into an intimate garden here.

I took 12 months to become acquainted with the plants. I thought it would be like going into any new garden, but then I realised there was no room for manoeuvre. It there is a failure, many of the plants are now listed, and have strict legal export licences on them.

There are also the health and safety issues which compromise a lot of what you are trying to do. You have to remember that Plas y Rhiw was an absolute jungle when the Misses Keating were here. They only opened the garden for three months during the summer and the rest of the time it was left to be more wild and lush. But with health and safety considerations you have to clear a thoroughfare. I'm also ever conscious of toxic plants, and I make sure they're moved out of reach further into the borders. I also go around every morning looking for fallen branches, keeping an eye out for anything which could cause injury.

Working to maintain someone else's design, you have to have an empathy and knowledge of what they were trying to do. But there are frustrations, which I'm only noticing now, nine years on. My artistic side is suffocated, so I have a garden at home.

In part, my garden shows more formality than here. But after saying that, I am here to carry on with the Keatings' ideas, that's one of the mandates of the Trust. Unlike in your own garden I can't change anything. Say I got tired of planting mauves in the same bed, and I'd like to change it to white, we're not allowed to. We can slightly vary the cultivars, providing they're the same colour, but that's it.

I am an organic gardener, but given the logistical work here, with lack of staff, I sometimes look at a job and realise it'll take hours to do something which some Round-Up could sort out in an afternoon, but I would never compromise, and do that kind of thing.

Looking at gardens around the world, I realise that we're all looking for the same thing - peace and tranquillity, and they've achieved that here. You learn a lot about yourself too. The changes are infinite, I have never, ever not been engrossed in the garden, there is always something new happening.

I feel fortunate to work in a place of beauty, experiencing the life of a 19th century gardener. Through my work in the garden I feel that I've got to know one area of the Misses Keatings' character, and why they gave their property to the National Trust. It was to preserve, intact, a piece of old Wales, and a way of life, that even today to some extent, can still be seen on the Llŷn.

When older visitors come and say that they recognise the garden as being the same as it was 30 years ago, then I realise that we're succeeding in what we're trying to do here.

Making the most of compost.