My Life in Plants
The first plant I ever grew
A cactus, won at a local fairground when I was five. Twenty years later I had an opportunity to visit the garden of plantsman Maurice Mason, who was known to Jim Russell, resident garden designer at Castle Howard, where I was a trainee. A souvenir of the visit was a cutting of Begonia
masoniana, which he’d collected in the wild. I grew it with pride for the next 10 years.
The plant that shaped the gardener I am today
I have fond early childhood memories of foxgloves growing in the garden at home and being endlessly fascinated by the way their flowers fitted perfectly over each of my tiny fingers. Being stripped of flowers, the foxgloves didn’t last long but the appeal of plants has stayed with me ever since. I tend not to prematurely strip flowers off nowadays!
My favourite plant in the world
It has to be the common olive, which reminds me of many happy holidays abroad, sunshine and the scent of rosemary and fennel growing wild in Greece. The memory keeps me going through the dark days of winter.
The plant that changed my life
Seeing the giant wellingtonia groves in Kings Canyon National Park, California. The sheer scale of these colossal trees was breathtaking, as is their age; some are thought to be 3,000 years old. The power and ingenuity of nature to grow these remarkable trees from a grain-size seed has stayed with me.
The plant that’s made me work the hardest
Elder. The overgrown 20-acre woodland garden at Knebworth House, where I was head gardener in the early 80s, hadn’t been maintained for decades and was choked with elder. Each one had to be winched out, which took a lot of effort over many weeks. The reward was carpets of bluebells.
The plant I’d love to grow more of
Oranges, but then I’d like to live somewhere warm where I could grow them outside!
The plant I am in human form
Erigeron karvinskianus. To me, the endless succession of tiny daisy flowers represents the mass of ideas which always seem to pop into my head. My wife says they’re also small and perfectly formed, if somewhat messy – just like me!
The plant I’d always give as a gift
Lemon verbena. It’s surprising how many people don’t know it but are knocked out by the scent of those leaves. We grow one at home near the front door and I can never resist a sniff on the way to work and back.