You can just describe a garden if you like – let us really picture it in our mind’s eye. Is it formal? Informal? Large? Small? Modern? Traditional?

You could write a piece about what you get out of a garden – whether it’s actual produce or flowers, or whether it’s inner peace and a state of contentment.

Or perhaps you don’t get that from a garden – maybe gardening is your pet hate. There’s always something to do; it’s a constant battle of planning, sowing, pricking out, planting out, nurturing and growing, it flowers for two minutes and then you have to dig it out and put something else in its place.

What does the garden symbolise? Is it home and happiness – children and grandchildren running about in it, or a place for you, just for you to call your own, or a reminder of things past?

And, of course, it’s a great place for interactions, for characters talking to each other. Who – or what – is in the garden? How did they get there? Use your imagination. Try putting two wildly differing characters in the garden such as – a clown and a bus driver. You’ve got a lot of scope for a back story there as to why they’re in the garden together.

What else could happen in a garden? Has there been some horticultural or structural catastrophe?

Don’t forget a garden has structures – walls, fences, sheds, ponds, patios, seating… anything could happen in or around them.

Or maybe your story starts in a garden then moves on to somewhere else…

You could look at it from the point of view of a bird or an insect or an animal who lives in or passes through the garden.

Plenty to go at.

As usual: Where? Why? Who? When? How? What’s the situation?