Sissinghurst

In mid-June, around a month before Liz was due to give birth, my mum came down to visit and we had lunch and a walk in the sunshine at Sissinghurst Castle Garden, a National Trust property in Kent formely home to Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson.

There's a lovely little restaurant in one of the barns and the gardens are beautiful, overlooked by a tower that you can climb and get wonderful views. This shot is taken from the top of the tower, looking straight down on some of the other tourists climbing the steps to walk through the tower, which also acts as a gate.

While the gardens are ornate and splendid, this is probably my favourite photograph of the day: the simplicity of the people picked out against the vibrant green grass and the red brick steps providing a nice bit of contrast and giving the people somewhere to be aiming for within the frame. There's also an element of symmetry, broken only by the people and the climber in the corner.