When I began constructing my garden - now a meandering maze of flowerbeds and curious pruning experiments - I was thinking about the way I painted abstract images, because the garden was to be a sort of growing sculptural version of one of my abstract paintings. It was my intention that there should always be something to look at, and that one pathway should lead into another and that the flowerbeds - the primary beds all being circular with circular paths around them - should do the same. I never wanted to be visually bored, even in winter. And I never am - I never have to gaze at my empty garden in dismay while trying to remember what it looked like when the plants were all in full bloom, because I'm a perennial coward; I fear bare patches of no interest during the winter months, so I filled my garden with evergreens - varieties of euonymous and hellebores and (literally hundreds) of evergreen miniature azaleas - so that once the perennials die back no patch is ever left bare. In winter the garden evolves from an overabundant, overstuffed gasp of colour to a more muted palette of yellows and greens.

This is when I strip back the dead leaves and branches and get to examine the groundwork again. My rocks and the stone walling that I built become visible; the paved edging of each flowerbed that separates one from another, and all of them from the winding grass pathways, is exposed. The clutter of abundant foliage no longer obscures the foundations and I am able to see the bones of my creation, the structure and the shapes, so I can decide then how I want to prune and if I want to make changes.

This is when there is time to decide what to do next; there is no frantic mowing of grass every week, or manic pruning as the various shrubs that inhabit relatively small spaces decide to quadruple in size with the exuberance of summer. Above me, the trees, their twigs and branches sharp against the sky, have a clean-cut beauty of their own; their individual patterns of growth are sculptural in their own right, and sharply defined against the changing backdrop of the times of day. Each variety of tree has its own character even in its nakedness, and its type can be determined by this. I shape some of these, too; there is one silver birch that I keep as a tall lollipop, and the fast-growing weeping willow, beneath which I dug a pond, is kept cut like an umbrella with occasional hanging tendrils, because if left it becomes too dense to walk under.

On January 1 this year the whole garden and the surrounding landscape for miles and miles, was frozen. Every twig and branch was encased in a crust of hoarfrost that had built up overnight as we all slept. Each tree and blade of grass appeared to have been dipped in icing sugar; the clean, bright, theatrical whiteness of it all was blinding.

The ground remained frozen solid for what seemed like weeks - and then the snow came. The life of the night was imprinted in tiny footprints throughout the pathways; pheasant footprints criss-crossed with the paw marks of neighbours' cats and the tiny clawprints of blackbirds and sparrows.

There is delight at being genuinely unable to do anything outside; there is no way of successfully hacking through the concrete of the frozen earth, so one is obliged to take a guilt-free rest from it whether one likes it or not. The lack of guilt is an important component of the ability to enjoy this enforced break. I know, because in my most fanatical gardening moments I've tried to work through the icy times, only to be brought to my senses when even a pickaxe refuses to dig a decent hole.

During the early stages of landscaping the garden it snowed incredibly heavily one year, but I wasn't going to let that deter me - until I found myself standing outside, not knowing where to stick a shovel, since none of the spray-painted white lines that I used to draw out my ideas on the ground were visible. It wasn't even possible to see where one flowerbed ended and another began.

Last week, as the snow melted and there were bouts of sun, I found myself surrounded by Welsh hills of frosted green, the illuminated colour eating away at the edges of the white blanket, leaving intricate lacework patterns. Every day brought new art to the mountains, and every now and again the sun turned the view into a stained-glass window; the greens seemed ridiculously bright and garish, the yellows glowed and the sky was a pale cobalt blue background.

When at last it began to drizzle and the snow was washed away, the first snowdrops appeared as if they had been straining against the ice until then. Suddenly, new growth is evident everywhere; like hope, pushing up though the clogged layers of earth to flower in spite of everything. I find it hard to believe that only days ago the landscape was white and the roads were thick with ice.

Walking my three little dogs - and Arthur, the Bengal eagle owl with the broken wing (who chooses to sit on my shoulder) - around the garden I find the crocosmias competing with daffodils to produce the first sharp leaves, and I notice the tiny new growth on previously stagnant plants that are going to explode over the next few weeks and become a jungle, while the last of the autumn leaves rot into the soil around them. As the hedgerows and hillsides come alive, the noise of the blackbirds and robins squabbling, and the cacophony of the wild ducks on the pond, all help to eradicate the memory of the limitations of winter.

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