Grandmother's centenary celebration

Patricia Gibbons was determined to mark her grandmother's centenary tomorrow with something different and a display of 100 Japanese maples will certainly put Lilian May Gibbons in the headlines.

Her grandmother was still helping to pot up seedlings at Hippopottering Nursery, Haxey, Doncaster, into her 90s but is having a more relaxing time now.

Patricia might have had mixed feelings about the display since her father John, who founded the nursery with her mother Margaret, died in April. "He knew all about the display and he would have wanted me to carry on," she said. "Now I am glad I did."

Last week's frosts caused her late problems. "The trees were lined up ready to load and I had to swap 15 of the tallest which caught the frost."

The display also involved two people spending 80 hours taking every leaf off the moss surrounding the trees. "It's a very fiddly job but the judges like things to be immaculate," she added.