Meet The Team

Anthony Masi

Favourite plant: Venus Flytrap, Dionaea muscipula
Biggest success: Growing the biggest runner bean at primary school
Biggest disaster: Afraid to take risks
Next gardening project: Growing own fruit and veg

Geoff Stebbings

Favourite plant: This is a really tricky one because I like most plants – it would be easier to name the few I don’t like! But iris are my favourites I guess, partly because they combine intricate beauty with, often, flamboyant colour and intriguing fragrance. The fact that the individual plants don’t flower for long almost adds to their appeal. But any garden I made must also include roses, snowdrops, daffodils, tulips – the list goes on!
Biggest success: Successes tend to be shortlived and quickly fade from the memory. Last year was not a great year for edible crops and I suppose that successes are measured against the level of difficulty, theoretical or real. So a few years ago, picking watermelons, or my first ripe apricots comes pretty high on the list.
Biggest disaster: Spreading manure over a flower bed near where people had to eat strawberries and cream when I was Head Gardener. Putting variegated reed, I bought at Hampton Court Palace Flower Show, in my pond was pretty stupid too – it seemed so delicate when I got it home.
Next gardening project: I really need to tackle my pond, which is overgrown with variegated reed. I need to decide whether to clean it out or fill it in and make most of it into a bog garden.

Jane Blackford

Favourite plant: Sweet pea.
Biggest success: My sweet peas the summer before last – they were covered in flowers from early summer right through until early October. I think they enjoyed all the rain.
Biggest disaster: Mimosa in a pot – I’m really not sure they enjoy being that confined.
Next gardening project: Removing a Thuja occidentalis ‘Rheingold’. It used to be attractive but although it is supposed to be slow-growing, it is now over 5ft high and the same wide and outgrowing its space. I’m afraid it’s got to go!

Pam Richardson

Favourite plant: I adore scented roses; even the stiff ungainly ones, they remind me of my lovely granddad who had a front garden full of them in the 50’s. We lived with him and as children we spent hours making yucky ‘perfumes’ with petals and water, for our long suffering mum.
50 years on and the scent of Roses, honeysuckle and sweet peas take me back to his lovely well kept garden (where we regularly wreaked havoc…and were forgiven)!
Biggest success: Finally getting a dream job as a Head Gardener – and putting all my favourite planting schemes into action! It gave me lots of practical experience...(and dodgy knees)!
Biggest disaster: Age 7 - Picking all the beautiful white flowers off Grandad’s peas and putting them into a bouquet as a ‘present’ for him!
Next gardening project: I am renting a cottage at the moment so all my projects are portable ones! I can’t wait to get the window boxes blooming, I’m planning a display that runs seamlessly from spring to winter. The ‘ingredients’ are already in the propagator.

Greg Loades

Favourite plant: I couldn’t have a garden without having floribunda rose ‘Margaret Merril’ in it. It’s like the famous ‘Iceberg’ rose but with more perfume and bigger blooms. The perfectly shaped white flowers smell great and last on the plant for ages and it’s a really healthy and easy to grow rose too.
Biggest success: Helping make a patio terrace out of Indian sandstone when I worked for a landscaper was my biggest success. We did it in the middle of summer and the weather was gorgeous, it was like being in the Mediterranean! It was an overgrown mess when we started and I couldn’t stop looking at ‘before   and after’ photos once we’d finished.
Biggest disaster: Forgetting to mark out where dormant plants are in the border and then digging them up is a recurring disaster for me!
Next gardening project:  Turning my empty greenhouse frame into a fruit cage is my next project. I can’t wait to be eating home-grown strawberries and raspberries!

Leigh Johnson

Favourite plant: Dahlias. Impressive in scope and colour, they really stand out in any garden
Biggest success: Growing cress in school
Biggest disaster: Mixing up my Weed Killer watering can with my plant one!
Next gardening project: Planting up my pond, while improving my knowledge of gardening in general

Laura Fanthorpe

Favourite plant: I wouldn’t have a garden without trusty Dicentra spectabilis, which looks great and is easy to grow. A childhood favourite, I have always been fascinated by the heart-shaped flowers in vivid pink and its long arching stems. It looks great against a backdrop of hostas, and creates a fantastic cottage garden look.
Biggest success: I have a standard rose ‘Wildeve’ growing in a large terracotta pot in my garden. This produces beautiful blooms of the palest pink, with a lovely fragrance. Last year, underneath this I grew antirrhinums with a fuchsia ‘Lady Boothby’ growing up the trunk of the rose. This made a fantastic, colourful display that I enjoyed throughout the summer.
Biggest disaster: When I first moved house I didn’t take into account the aspect of my garden and immediately set to filling it with all the plants I love. Many of these struggled and died in my north-facing garden, which only sees sun for a tiny amount of the day. I had to start all over again and rethink the type of plants I needed to include, and now it looks great with all the shade-loving plants thriving. It was a valuable lesson, because there’s little point struggling with plants that aren’t suitable for the space.
Next gardening project: After taking on an overgrown allotment, I spent most of the first year turning over the ground and hacking back weeds. It’s finally looking more reasonable, but my next step is to finish building raised beds out of all the timber that was uncovered beneath the grass. Hopefully once this is completed I can get to my favourite step – sowing my vegetables!

Andrew Wright

Favourite plant: Clematis
Biggest success: Clematis ‘Countess of Lovelace’ – it has large, fully double, lavender-blue  flowers with cream stamens – and it flowers profusely every year.
Biggest disaster: Lupins. I can’t get them to grow!
Next gardening project: I am putting in two beds of scented roses at the front of the house – just four more plants to go in and then I’m done

Clare Foggett

Favourite Plant: I can't narrow it down to one! It changes all the time, depending on the season and what's in flower, but I wouldn't want to be without my lovely Cercidiphyllum japonicum or katsura tree. It's the one with the leaves that smell of burnt sugar or candyfloss as they turn yellow and fall in autumn. I also love daffodils in spring, especially 'Topolino' and the later-flowering, scented Narcissus poeticus (pheasant's eye daffodil).
Biggest Success: Transforming the bottom end of my garden from scrappy lawn that faded into mud into a smaller, half-way decent lawn edged with borders for shade-loving plants. The muddy bit is now an area for vegetables, complete with greenhouse, raised beds with gravel paths in between and compost bins. It looks so much better!
Biggest Disaster: My allotment, for the last two years! With two awful summers, they haven't been the best years for growing veg and I've had disaster after disaster on the plot. Blight on the potatoes and tomatoes, a pathetic crop of runner beans, a grand total of one parsnip last year - why doesn't the rubbish weather affect the couch grass?
Next Gardening Project: Getting rid of a bit more lawn to extend my 'tropical' border, which I think needs to be much bigger to get that really lush, exotic look.

Carol Warters

Favourite plant: Sweet pea
Biggest success: Still waiting for it!
Biggest disaster:  Trying to grow cauliflowers - the tortoise ate them.
Next gardening project: Expanding a herbaceous border and getting rid of a bit more lawn.

Mark Timothy

Favourite plant:  Dahlia. Loads to choose from, and useful borders plants.
Biggest success: Digging and planting a curvy border from scratch
Biggest disaster: Planting drifts of mixed bulbs in my lawn. They look a mess, flowering at different times and at different highs. I should have planted only one variety.
Next gardening project: Adding a pergola to the patio.