Move over Titchmarsh
Former head boy’s gardening videos are web sensation
MOST boys his age would be unlikely to put gardening high on their list of career choices.
But ex-public school head boy Huw Richards has his sights set on being the next Alan Titchmarsh – and at 19 is already well on his way.
His gardening video blog is the most successful in the country, and he has appeared on TV programmes and discussed his passion for sustainable food production with Prince Charles.
The online videos have been watched 20million times and he believes he can help encourage young people to get into gardening.
From his home in Tregaron near Aberystwyth, he said: ‘My end goal is to present Gardeners’ World, or anything like that. I would add a different age demographic to it.
‘My passion is food production so if someone had an empty garden or one that was full of junk, and wanted to grow their own food, I would love to go in and transform it.’
Having earned £12,000 from gardening before he was 18, he has recently secured a number of sponsorship deals from gardening tool companies and seed providers.
He started creating YouTube videos about gardening aged 12, when he was ‘bored’ after school. His channel, Huws Nursery, has attracted more than 12million views and over 75,000 subscribers, while his Facebook page has a further eight million views.
Amid a rising trend for ‘grow your own’, his most popular videos are ‘growing potatoes the lazy way’, ‘seven gardening hacks with plastic bottles’ and ‘ten terrific tomato growing tips’.
As a result of his popularity on social media, he has appeared ITV’s Coast And Country. He will also be giving fortnightly gardening tips on S4C’s Welsh language magazine programme Heno.
Since leaving £8,820-a-term Llandovery College last summer he has taken parttime jobs in the school’s marketing office and at the Sustainable Food Trust. He has also shown Prince Charles a ‘growing project’ he has been involved in.
His family have an 11-acre smallholding with an orchard, chickens, ducks, sheep and pigs, which he says has made him ‘understand what good, proper food is’.
He added: ‘My passion is for everyday people to be able to walk outside and just take something that they have grown.’