I have been interested in history and gardening for as long as I can remember.

 

As a child I was allowed to have a patch of ground to grow whatever I liked. My mother called the plants, ‘Weeds’. I called them wild flowers.

 

I was fascinated by the strange names and the  folk tales that such common plants had.

 

I was lucky to attend a village school that had books about King Arthur, Greek myths and the Vikings. My imagination went into overdrive.

 

I spent my childhood building camps, cooking, well probably burning food, over open fires, making bows and arrows and using cricket stumps for swords - I still find cricket very boring...

 

 

I eventually became a qualified gardener and worked my way up to being a head Gardener.

Later I researched medieval gardens and the uses of the plants, which was very useful when I created the medieval gardens at the Prebendal Manor at Nassington, Northamptonshire.

 

I studied for my MA in Garden History at Birkbeck, London whilst I was a full-time college lecturer. Unfortunately due to government guidelines, college courses do not give you much time to teach real gardening anymore. I decided to become self-employed instead, or ‘not very employed’, as I tend to refer to myself.