Here are some photos from Wakehurst Place in Sussex, which I went to with my mother on Monday. A lot of the park is intensely crowded with trees and plants, and there was quite a menacing, prehistoric atmosphere in the valleys, with the gnarled roots of trees splaying across paths, densely packed ferns and the parrot-coloured rhododendrons and fox-gloves. There was a hesitant sense that perhaps an age-old faerie might any minute appear among the leaves, or, more likely an English bank-holiday-er tramping out in sensible fleece and boots. There is some kind of stolid style-blindness about English tourists that impels them all to wear beige or navy, the women strapping leather handbags across the sturdiest of anoraks.

Anyway, there is definitely a hint of autumn in the air now, the scent of bonfires and the occasional leaf crunching underfoot reminiscent of that back-to-school feeling.