Well, we now know that we can seat 150 people in the Hall (but only with the generous loan of extra seating from Westmarsh Village Hall – thank you). He spoke for nearly two hours and we were all riveted.
He began by describing his path into horticulture and designing gardens. It began with gardening with his grandparents (Tiny Nan and Scruffy Nan) in East London. (So please encourage your own grandchildren..)
His move to Budleigh Salterton, where he did not fit in. His smart London fashions had not yet reached Devon. He left school with no qualifications. At 17, he was accepted for the army, but the recruiting officer suggested he should try and get a job first. Lucky break no.1. He was accepted for an apprenticeship with the Local Authority Parks department, one of the last in the country – Devon was a little behind the times with that too. Lucky break No 2. He learned all aspects of horticulture from propagation to maintaining sportsgrounds, thanks to his bosses, who also ran lobster fishing boats as a sideline. On qualifying, looking for a job, he answered an advertisement and had a 3 and a half hour talk with a gardener, who later phoned to say he liked him very much, but there was another candidate who was better qualified. A couple of weeks later, the gardener phoned to say that the first candidate thought he was over-qualified, would Adam still like the job. I’ll think about it and let you know he replied. The gardener was Geoff Hamilton. Adam had never watched Gardeners World; he had other things to do on a Friday night. His wife and his mother told him to accept pdq.
It was clear that of all the breaks in his life, having Geoff Hamilton as his mentor was the greatest. As many of you know, Geoff was not just a lovely, generous man, he was ahead of his time on many gardening issues, including organic gardening and finding alternatives to peat compost. Geoff funded Adam to train as a landscape gardener and garden designer, which led to his entering gardens for Chelsea, where he has been awarded 7 golds. His seventh was a garden for Homebase on behalf of the Alzheimer’s Society, which resulted in a long discussion with the Queen which ended with his saying not goodbye but ta ta. It was evident that entering a garden for the Chelsea Flower Show is HARD WORK (something we shall hear more about from Steve Edney at our meeting in November).
In fact, designing a garden for Chelsea took such a toll that he promised Mrs Frost he would not enter another garden for Chelsea. Unfortunately (or rather, fortunately – for us) the RHS had other ideas. Every year, they invite a gardener to design a garden for the ‘triangle’, a large area at the show. And so this year at Chelsea, Adam’s garden will demonstrate the threats that our garden plants are under, especially from diseases spread by invading pests. (Xylella, from America, has spread to Europe, causing the death of thousands of olive trees. It has not yet reached the UK – we hope. It can affect over 500 species from rosemary to oak trees).
Adam told us how he approached designing gardens, working through ideas, which left many of us in the audience to reappraise our own gardens.
You can hear Adam talking to Steve Edney which was broadcast on Radio Kent’s Gardening programme from 2nd Feb, about 2 and a half hours after the beginning of the programme.
