What is a racecourse if not an enormous garden? Clipped hedges, wildlife margins, a sprinkling of manicured flowers and a neatly cropped lawn that happens to double as a track…

My favourite racecourse garden is at Fontwell Park, where the public enclosure is dotted with topiary yew sculptures and stone follies. A close runner-up is the home straight at Redcar, which (last time I visited) was bordered by a colourful allotment boasting sheds fabricated from old sponsorship hoardings.

At Kelso in recent years we’ve planted trees, hedging, and a few thousand bulbs. An avenue of beech saplings, alternately green and copper coloured, runs parallel to the home straight and, while they look very attractive now, they will be majestic in forty to fifty years’ time. Because that’s one of the things about gardening and racecourses – they both require a long-term view. A bit like the performance of our blog selections (Saturday’s is Filibustering in the Stone of Destiny Handicap Hurdle at Perth).

Geoff Hamilton, the best presenter of Gardeners World there’s ever been and is ever likely to be, would have celebrated his ninetieth birthday this weekend if his tenure on our TV screens hadn’t been tragically cut short by a heart attack before his fiftieth birthday. A compendium of his “greatest hits” has aired on BBC4 recently, but anyone requiring garden inspiration should seek out Geoff Hamilton’s Cottage Gardens (available from ebay as old fashioned VHS / CD, or clips on YouTube).

The Cottage Gardens series follows Geoff as he creates two gardens that can still be visited today at Barnsdale, in Rutland, the family home where Gardeners’ World was filmed. While the Gentleman’s Garden featured elements requiring a significant budget, the Artisan’s Garden was designed around the old-fashioned gardeners’ theory that every plant will find its own best place.

All the features could be easily made by the average DIY enthusiast and the plants were easy to grow and propagate. The Barnsdale website says, “The entire garden epitomises Geoff’s approach, with the plants packed in and allowed to do their own thing in what might seem to be organised chaos.”

Which, taken together with the long-term view and low budget angle, matches my thoughts about managing a small racecourse: our groundstaff are obliged to be DIY enthusiasts (everything from fixing the washdown area in the stables, to laying paving slabs to improve access), and there is nothing more charming than the organised chaos of a raceday – when excitement blooms and every racegoer finds their own best place, whether that’s in the private hospitality pot, on the roof of the old grandstand, or spilling over the rails.