Heartbreak of the Rag Lady

For nearly 30 years she has borne the hardships of living rough with only her own resourcefulness - and a dignified silence. But, after a council mistakenly wrecked the small patch of wasteland she had reclaimed as her own flower garden, Anne Naysmith is finally finding it hard to cope.

Speaking publicly for the first time, the woman known as the "Rag Lady of Chiswick" told the Evening Standard: "My things have been destroyed, it's heartbreaking. How would you feel if you didn't have much but the little you did have was ruined? One gets so fed up with the whole thing. I do feel like breaking down in tears. But if there's one thing I know it is that crying is not going to get me anywhere."

Miss Naysmith, 65 - tipped as a child to be one of the great concert pianists of her generation - began living in a blue Ford Consul at the age of 39 when her musical career faltered. She changed her name from Smith to distance herself from her mother, whose dream was to see her daughter a musician of international renown.

The garden in a Chiswick car park - piled high with earth and compost from skips - sprouts fuchsias, geraniums, wallflowers and pansies donated by locals and garden centres. There is a plot of potatoes, which she stews with cabbage in a tin pot on a makeshift fire made from newspapers. Two weeks ago, however, Miss Naysmith returned to find that the trees and high weeds affording her garden privacy and shelter had been chopped down. Hounslow council insists it was a mistake.

As she fed pigeons chips from a takeaway, Miss Naysmith said: "I've had so many hardships in my life, so many disappointments and failures. You wouldn't call me one of life's successes. But life goes on. You do what you can."

Her garden, which she began creating around 10 years ago, was her last oasis of privacy: "I made a little square in the corner of the asphalt to do my cooking. Every time I cooked the fire would melt away a bit more asphalt and, little by little, I chipped it away."

Miss Naysmith's life is an urban survival course, using every resource at her disposal. In March, the council towed away the Consul, her home of 26 years, from Prebend Gardens, Chiswick, after complaints from some residents. Others clubbed together to buy her a new car but it was vandalised and she moved on.

Her day starts when she wakes at a secret sleeping place near Stamford Brook station, washes in public toilets and cleans her clothes with a hosepipe at a petrol station. They are wrapped in newspaper to dry. She regularly listens in on court cases, indulging an interest in law held since childhood. Once a week she immerses herself in books and scores at Barbican music library - her only concession to her former life, of which she refuses to speak.

Friends say she has money - she was one of the shareholders to benefit from a windfall when the Halifax building society became a bank in the early Nineties - but offers of accommodation and charity are refused.

The latest destruction is not the first: over the years plants have been stolen, shrubs vandalised and a fence set on fire. "There's always been a strong spirit of violence in this area," she said. "Anything really good and beautiful tends to be destroyed or stolen. But one plugs on. I just have to live with it."