My Garden Hero

One of my garden heroes is the late Geoff Hamilton who taught me most of what I know about gardening. Geoff presented Gardener's World on the BBC for many years and was one of the first gardeners who promoted organic gardening.He made you feel that organic gardening was really the only option if you loved your planet and wanted what was best for it and all its inhabitants and he made it sound very logical and fun too. I'll never forget his remarkable enthusiasm and passion for all things garden related; even when he was explaining how to sow seeds or take cuttings for the umpteenth time he would still be enthusiastic. No minor feat that.
Through the years I bought many of his books, which are all very practical, filled to the brim with good advice and down to earth. Geoff had great ideas about how to make things for your garden that wouldn't cost the earth.
Here he explains how to make 2 compost bins and this is what I'm using in my kitchen garden today.
They do their job very nicely, so thanks very much Geoff!
In 1990 Geoff presented a series of programmes called The Ornamental Kitchen Garden which I loved to bits. The mixing of flowers, veggies, fruit and herbs was such an eye-opener for me and I couldn't wait to create a garden like that for myself. Fortunately I was able to create an ornamental kitchen garden aka potager although I had to wait 15 years before I was able to fulfill my ornamental kitchen garden dream. But it was worth the wait!
In 1996 Geoff was working on another successful series; Paradise Gardens and once again I bought the accompanying book. I'm glad I did as it turned out to be his last one.
Unfortunately shortly before his 60th birthday, Geoff died. It was quite unexpected and came as a great shock to many. I felt that I had lost a close personal friend even though I'd never met Geoff in person.
After Geoff Alan Titchmarsh became the head presenter of Gardener's World and nice chap he undoubtedly is, he was no Geoff. I still remember clearly that sinking feeling I got when I watched Alan used some toxic stuff in his garden. I felt that Geoff and everything he stood for had truly died then. I didn't watch GW much after that until a couple of years ago when, while I was zapping, I unexpectedly caught a glimpse of GW and some chap with dark curly hair. Montagu Don had become the new presenter and after watching a few episodes it became clear to me that all was right once again with my Gardener's World as Montagu is another very enthusiastic and passionate gardener and mad keen about gardening organically. What a relief!
On the right Montagu Don who, and I have it on good authority, looks good in a vase. :-D

copyright 2008 Y.E.W. Heuzen

Low maintenance gardening is for those not really interested. Christopher Lloyd