Garden designer Angie Townsend has spent the last year making a film about her garden. She talks to Women's Editor Christen Pears.

ANGIE Townsend strides across the landscape wearing a long coat and wellies. Behind her, the fields and hills fade into the mist. These are the opening shots of Spirit of Place - a film that takes the viewer through a year in Angie's spectacular North Yorkshire garden.

When I visit on a damp and overcast autumn day, the trees are stripped of their leaves and trembling in the wind that sweeps in across the open countryside. The borders are bare but in the film they're bursting with colour and variety.

Angie, a gardening writer and designer, says: "I have always loved gardening and the outdoors from being a little girl and making a film is something I've always wanted to do for a few years now. I've spent an entire year working on Spirit of Place. I wouldn't say it's been stressful but it has been a real challenge."

Angie moved to the North-East from her native Gloucestershire in the 1970s with her first job as an art teacher. "Gloucestershire is a very beautiful part of the country. It has undulating hills and lovely forests but when I saw Richmond for the first time, I knew it was my spiritual home. It was so much wilder, it's untamed. I still get the same buzz from it now as I did then."

Angie now lives near Newsham, where she has a large, woodland garden.

"I have always loved my garden. It was a wilderness when I came here 18 years ago. I couldn't see through the trees at all but over the years I've made something out of it. It's been a long, slow process and I still haven't done everything I want to."

The garden reflects the wider landscape. Angie hasn't tried to tame it too much but has worked with what's there. There's a large wooded and area and borders densely packed with hardy perennials and bulbs. She's also created gravel gardens and a loggery and is planning a fantasy area in the wood for children to enjoy.

Angie opens her garden for the Red Cross four times a year but visitors are always welcome during the summer, providing they make an appointment.

Angie trained as an art teacher but, after a few years, decided she needed a change and turned to natural healing. It was this which led to her first film.

"I made that mainly just to inform people about what natural healing could do for them. It wasn't commercial but it attracted the attention of producers at Tyne Tees Television. They came and made a half-hour documentary with me and I suppose that's where I got a taste for it."

She continued with healing for a while but found it increasingly draining.

"I'm not the sort of person who stays in a job just for the money - I have to enjoy it and I wasn't. I wanted to do something else. Local people had always known about my garden and used to come and ask me for advice or to help them out. That was the start of it."

She took on 14 gardens, doing physical work as well as designing, but then a major operation put her out of action. She began to do more design work and also turned to writing, producing a weekly gardening column for The Teesdale Mercury, as well as articles for a gardening magazine.

"I really enjoyed that but I wanted to do something visual. I had the idea of making a film about three years ago but it took a while for me to get round to doing it.

"People thought it was just going to be a home video but I was determined it wouldn't be, right from the start. I wanted it to be professional, something that could compete with commercial videos."

The filming process was painstaking and Angie has spent hundreds of hours transforming the ideas she sketched on storyboards into a film.

Working with a local cameraman she has spent hours scripting the video, setting up the shots and editing the footage.

Living next to a farm made things even more tricky. There were plenty of occasions when she was getting ready to deliver a piece to a camera and one of the dogs would bark or a tractor would rumble past. "It was quite frustrating at the time because everything took so much longer than I'd expected but it's quite funny now I look back on it."

Spirit of Place is a personal account but it also offers practical advice to the northern gardener. "So many of the gardening programmes on television are filmed south of the Watford Gap, which isn't very useful for people up here. They're also very personality-based.

"They are good because they get people interested but they paint a very glossy picture. It's all about quick fixes, which is fine if you have £3,000 and a bulldozer but it's not that simple for everyone else. People need a bit more practical advice - even if it's just describing a plant and telling them what sort of conditions it needs. In my film, I wanted to give people a few seasonal tips, as well as advice and information, and introduce them to plants they probably haven't come across before. It's something that can be enjoyed by the seasoned gardener and people who are new to it."

At first, she couldn't believe it when she saw the video on the shelves next to films by northern TV luminaries Luke Casey and Eric Robson.

"I love what they do and it's a fantastic feeling to be up there with them. Now I'm a bit more used to it, though, it's a case of move over Luke and Eric," she laughs.

l Spirit of Place is available from The Northern Echo office in Priestgate, Darlington, Ottakar's Darlington, Mills newsagents and Ravensworth Nurseries in Richmond, as well as other small outlets throughout the region for £12.99.

It can also be bought mail order for £13.99 from www.greenlady.ndo.co.uk or (01833) 621411.

WIN A SIGNED COPY OF ANGIE'S VIDEO

The Northern Echo has three signed copies of Spirit of Place to give away to readers. To enter the competition, simply unscramble the letters of this word to reveal a shrub that attracts butterflies: EADBIDLU.

Send your answer, along with your name, address and daytime telephone number to Spirit of Place Competition, Features, The Northern Echo, Priestgate, Darlington, DL1 1NF.

The closing date is Friday, December 20.