Caroline Quentin tells Yours how gardening healed her childhood pain, and why pets are the perfect outdoor companions
She loves to keep people guessing. You probably had Caroline Quentin firmly pegged as an actress, best known for roles in Jonathan Creek and Men Behaving Badly, only to discover a graceful ballroom ability when she took part in Strictly in 2020. Now she’s revealing more hidden accomplishments – gardening, cookery and painting – with the release of a new book, Drawn to the Garden (£20, Frances Lincoln).
“We’re living in a world that is absolutely terrifying, and I think gardening acts as a sort of salve. It’s a balm for the soul,” explains Caroline. “It doesn’t matter whether you’re out in your garden or you’re just trying to grow some basil on your window sill, it makes you feel that you’re doing something positive. With climate change and everything else, the garden is one of the only places left for hope.”
Being outdoors has always provided solace. She writes about one of her earliest memories: letting the sun dry her tears when her mother, Katie, was away receiving treatment for bipolar disorder.
“I thought I was going to write a book about how to plant lettuces, but I ended up writing something entirely different,” she says. “That story was a stream of consciousness and I thought: this is what it’s about for me.” Her childhood, which she describes as often “unstable”, naturally led her outside, despite neither parent being a passionate gardener. “If your house isn’t a great place to be when you’re young, I think being out under a big sky sometimes is the happy place,” she explains.
And, at 63, it’s still her happy place. It’s also still a place to connect with her mother, who passed away in 2012 and is memorialised by plants including a maple (she was born in Canada) and a bright red Cornus ‘Midwinter fire’ to represent her red hair and occasionally fiery nature.
Caroline’s enviable 35-acre Devonshire plot has featured in BBC coverage of the Chelsea Flower Show, including her vegetable beds, greenhouse (“my favourite place on earth”) and the tree ‐lined pond in which she dips. “I love that I can swim and just be with dragonflies and swallows and waterlilies or irises. That’s the thing I love more than anything,” she reveals.
As well as an earth mother, Caroline is mum to adult children Rose and William, with husband Sam Farmer, who she met when he was a runner on Men Behaving Badly. She starred with Rose, a fellow actress, in the play Infamous last year and describes their relationship as “very, very close”, sharing a mutual “sense of the ridiculous”.
