My Life in Plants
The first plant I ever grew
Primula denticulata, a common perennial in the Pennine gardens of my childhood. Years later in Bhutan, on the eastern edge of the Himalayas, I remember camping in a damp meadow filled with this primula and the early morning mist retreating to reveal a sea of blue.
The plant which shaped the man I am today
Gentiana sino-ornata. My foreman in the rock garden at Moss Bank Park, Bolton, had a love for gentians, including this introduction from China. After seeing the rich blue trumpetshaped blooms, I dreamed of being a plant explorer and seeing it in the wild.
My favourite plant in the world
The hardy Chinese conifer Metasequoia glyptostroboides.
I love its soaring, tapered crown, rich oxblood-red bark, delicate pale-green, ferny leaves and, in older trees, the muscular buttresses on the trunk.
A plant that changed my life
Nicotiana rustica. I often wonder what might have happened if I hadn’t found this Mexican tobacco plant growing as a weed on a local allotment as a schoolboy. New to Lancashire and only the second recorded in Britain, it had me thinking what else I might find if I knew more about plants. A year later, I became a gardener.
The plant that made me work hardest
Russell lupins. I love their long, fulsome spires of pouting, multi-coloured blooms, but try as I might, I’ve never managed to enjoy them in my own garden, thanks mainly to slugs!
The plant I am in human form
It’s the English oak, Quercus
robur, which featured in my life since first climbing them as a boy. Reliable, predictable, I share my stories and experiences as an oak spreads its seeds.
The plants I would love to grow more
Palms. Ever since, as a national serviceman in 1957, I wandered wide-eyed through the famous palm valley in Singapore’s Botanic Garden, I’ve admired them. In my own garden I grow
Chamaerops humilis and Trachycarpus wagnerianus. If I only had room, I’d try Butia capitata and, maybe, Phoenix canariensis and then… dream on!
The plant I would always give away as a gift
Veronica umbrosa ‘Georgia Blue’. After first introducing this as a rooted snippet from a woodland in the Caucasus Mountains of Abkhazia (formerly Georgia) in 1979, I’ve given rooted tufts to hundreds of friends at home and abroad. Its Oxford-blue, white-eyed flowers smother the bronze-purple growth in spring.