best for GETTING OUTDOORS
From our favourite experts to Hollywood stars and even royalty, gardening is on trend!
Kate Garraway
Good Morning Britain’s Kate Garraway, who lost husband Derek Draper in January, took to Instagram to share a moving post after marking her first birthday since his passing.
Taking her 1.3 million followers around her ‘healing’ garden, the mother of Darcey, 18, and Billy, 14, admitted she’d been avoiding the overgrown space. She said: ‘I have had the most amazing day in the garden. I loved doing the garden when Derek wasn’t well because it felt like when I was planting and doing stuff, when we could get him outside he could come and be with me.’
In another heartfelt post, Kate thanked her parents for gifting her a wheelbarrow on her birthday adding: ‘You know my garden is my #happyplace.’
King Charles
No one has done more to raise awareness of gardening in the past 50 years – which he once described as ‘the most therapeutic business’. Mocked for admitting he talked to his plants, he has long been an advocate of the organic lifestyle.
Our most green-fingered king has devoted time and personal fortune to saving old estate gardens across the UK, speaking tirelessly to groups and the media, and especially to the youth.
As patron of the National Garden Scheme since 2002, King Charles wholeheartedly supports the nation’s passion for gardens, as well as enjoying gardening as a hobby himself, especially at his Highgrove Estate.
‘Something in our soul, I think, responds to wildflower meadows,’ he once said. It certainly does, Your Majesty.
Well, Spring has officially sprungand it seems it’s not just Alan Titchmarsh who’s dusting off his gardening gloves...
We’ve found some green-fingered celebs, who find tranquillity amongst the outdoors...
Monty Don
Broadcaster, writer and gardener extraordinaire – Monty Don, 68 – revealed he started gardening when he was just seven years old. He used to see it as a chore, until one day, sowing carrot seeds at the age of 17, he realised he adored it. He said at the time, ‘It was a complete revelation.’
When he was living in London in the Eighties and his jewellery business was doing well – David Bowie and Diana, Princess of Wales, were customers – he preferred to tend his garden rather than go out clubbing with his peers.
A few years later, when the business collapsed and he and his wife were saddled with a hefty £300,000 debt, it was his garden that helped save his sanity. ‘It heals, it salves, it sets you straight,’ he said at the time.
