Robert Ketchell, a designer of Japanese gardens and a guide to gardens in Japan, is at full stretch when we first talk. He is off to meet Princess Anne in Spalding, on Lincolnshire's east coast, where she is due to visit a garden he and his business partner, Jacquie Blakeley, have created.
In truth, he explains, there are five "celebrity gardens" commissioned as part of the Fenland Centre, a shopping cum tourist information complex. "The idea is to promote the area for visitors, explaining how it was developed from flat swamplands to the historically rich agricultural country it is today."
The property developer, Thornfields, specified that one of the five gardens be Japanese, and who better to call upon on than Robert's company, Sansui-Design?