Hello I'm Kirstie Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive

for rights reasons we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in the year 2000 and the presenter was Sue Lawley. My castaway this week is a gardener and writer. To those who love plants he's a source of inspiration.

His many books and his column in country life, for which he's written for nearly 40 years now without missing a single week

contain a wealth of information and more importantly assertive judgments

about what does and doesn't work.

He still lives in the house great Dixster in Sussex in which he was born in

1921. It was bought by his father and remodeled by the famous English architect

Edwin Lutians and has been his place of work throughout his life. Here he's created a world of plants and flowers which never fade maintaining color, interest and beauty throughout the year.

I've done what I can in my lifetime, he says,

when you've spent 80 years in a place, you should have improved things.

He is Christopher Lloyd. A lifetime spent in the same house house in the same garden, Christopher.

That's a rare achievement these days, isn't it?

Well, it is partly luck and partly you have to make your lap, don't you think?

But of course you haven't planted every plant. partly you have to make all up don't you think?

But of course you haven't planted every plant.

You still have plants that your mother and father planted, haven't you?

Oh yes, there's a lot of toapure, for instance, that my father was extremely keen on but the trouble about

topiaries it takes time and people are impatient.

I read that your topuri was peacocks but has become coffee pots is that right?

Well no they are separate pieces there are two coffee pots and there are a lot of

what we call peacocks now but they originated as fighting cocks and blackbirds and pheasants, quite a menagerie,

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