In her bright pink shoes and elegant black trouser suit, Margarita Koledzinskich looks out of place among the potatoes and marrows of her vegetable patch.

But three times a week she drives out from her home in the industrial city of Chelyabinsk in Russia’s Ural region to tend to her potatoes and the marrows, as well as her tomatoes, peppers, pumpkins and leeks, along with apple and cherry trees.