IS IT still autumn or is it winter? My hornbeam tree believes it is autumn. The leaves are bright orange, like some of the trees lining the A5.

But we are in December and does that mean it is winter? The Met Office will tell you it’s winter on December 1 but for me, winter begins on December 21 – the shortest day – the winter solstice.

My hornbeam tree agrees. It is a delight to look at from our sunroom when all the flowers have gone from the garden and all the colours are draining away. This is a tree which grows wild in Shropshire, but we had to plant it in gardens in Yorkshire.

The leaves look rather like a beech leaf, light green in summer, but the hornbeam does not belong to the same family as the beech. The hornbeam trees have seeds with wings; beech produce nuts inside a husk instead. Hornbeam also gives us a much brighter colour in autumn.

Do you remember Geoff Hamilton who used to present Gardeners’ World? If you do, you may remember his Paradise Gardens series.

We saw him make a little round house of trees with a seat inside.

“Just the thing for us,” I thought, and my husband planted some willows in a circle and we had our little house.

But all was not well because the leaves at the base wilted and died and the growth was at the top. We could not get it to look like Geoff’s. The only answer was to go to ‘Barnsdale’ and see what we were doing wrong. I saw straight away the mistake we had made – we had planted the wrong trees. Geoff had used hornbeam. So, we bought hornbeam saplings and started again. It worked, and now we have a wonderful little house.

You see, hornbeam trees do not always grow like other trees, their twigs do not grow from a terminal bud, they grow from side buds.

More branches grow sideways, so we have cover all round our little house – even on the trunks.

Geoff Hamilton knew that, and we didn’t. Even though we had our lovely little round house, I hadn’t finished with the hornbeam yet.

I wanted one that stood alone and filled its branches with bright orange leaves for us to see in the autumn. We wanted to look at it from the warmth of our sunroom. We had a site meeting. It was decided that if the small silver birch sapling was cut down, we could put the hornbeam in its place. It was the perfect position.

But the next thing I saw was my husband coming into the house with his head in his hands.

“There’s something wrong,” he said. He held his head. I was worried. Had he hit his head or got a splinter in his eye?

“What’s the matter?” I asked anxiously.

“I’ve cut the wrong tree down by mistake.”

He had somehow got muddled and cut down a nearby mountain ash sapling instead.

I was so relieved that he was not hurt, it was hard to be sad about the mountain ash, which could easily be replaced. We ended up laughing. The hornbeam tree is thriving, it has not suffered from its uncertain beginnings and is determined to hang on.

n VICKY’S new book, Ducklings on my Doorstep, which is based on her Tizer columns, is available at the Oswestry Heritage Centre, Booka, Willow Gallery and Qube.

She will sign copies of the book at centre from 11am to 1pm on December 15.