Sokoun joined us in the spare, open-air, concrete-floor living area under the second storey of the wooden house, where a middle-aged couple stood to greet us.
Rosemary and John Nicholson were a middle-aged couple with an amateur interest in plant-hunters those obsessive gardeners who sailed the world from the early 17th century onwards, looking for exotic trees and shrubs to delight their sponsors, the owners of the great English gardens.