Smriti Daniel
white hair, his polio injury, aggravated by no less than three autorickshaw accidents and arthritis, Mike today uses crutches – “chopsticks,” he calls them - to get about. “It never held me back,” he says of his injury. A short attention span, which he refers to variously as “ants in the pants” and “excess Burgher syndrome” means he’s constantly on the move. His return to painting marks the end of a long drought during which he only sketched a little to keep his hand in.
While the move back to Sri Lanka has brought Mike’s artistry to the fore, it has also meant he is no longer an active gardener. However, this phase was prefaced by a tenyear run filled with extraordinary achievements. Beginning in 1992, Mike won the gold medal in six consecutive years at the iconic Chelsea Flower Show, managing to garner 150 gold medals and four silver medals in a various horticultural competitions by the end of the decade. Like so much else in his life, it all happened quite by chance.
When Mike left St. Peter’s, he chose to study welding, for no other reason than that he loved how the sparks flew from the welding torches. Having learned different techniques and how to approach various metals, he promptly abandoned it for most part, only returning to it in later years when he became interested in sculpture. Then came the jobs with friends – one extracting snake venom, surveys on the fresh water fish of Sri Lanka, a spell studying tree frogs and another taking care of tropical fish – before Mike set off for Guatemala via England in 1972. “I had a real fascination for Guatemala, but I didn’t get there till much later,” he says. “I loved England. It was like entering a birthday cake.” It was a world of concerts and vinyl records, parties and fun times with Sri Lankan friends who had also made the move.
It was there he would meet Liz David Jones, a native of Leeds who would become the mother of his boys. Another avid gardener, her family originally hailed from the Lake District. With his romantic life blooming, Mike picked up where he left off professionally, taking on work at an aquatic nursery in Hampton. He then joined the team at the Leeds City Museum where he was put in charge of their collection of live animals which included snakes, lizards, spiders, frogs and fish. Before he got there, they were losing huge numbers of animals but Mike brought to his job an understanding of what the creatures really needed. He created little habitats complete with places to hide and sources of water, and then sat back and allowed his charges to breed in comfort. He found