Mary Berry: "I didn't want to leave the house!" How gardening helped me through grief
Happy Place
Fearne Cotton
4.7 • 15.6K Ratings
🗓️ 1 June 2026
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Mary Berry has been married for 60 years and says she and her husband have never had a cross word. Her secret? Do a lap of the garden before saying the thing you might regret.
In this chat with Fearne, Mary shares the simple principles that have guided her life: be kind, contribute to community, and prioritise time in nature.
Mary’s 91, and her mum lived to 105. She believes a busy mind makes a happy person, so offers advice for getting into your gardening era (Fearne’s not quite there yet) regardless of how much outdoor space you have.
Mary also reflects on the wartime childhood in Bath that saw her school being bombed and her family needing to grow their own food. Plus, how do you move through the grief of losing a child?
Mary’s book, My Gardening Life, is out now.
If you liked this episode of Happy Place, you might also like:
Mary Berry’s first Happy Place chat
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and a massive welcome to Happy Place with me Fern Cotton. |
| 0:05.4 | This is the show that learns from other people's life experiences. |
| 0:09.9 | Today I'm chatting to Mary Berry. |
| 0:12.8 | When we were young, it was wartime. |
| 0:15.7 | My father really didn't want to garden, but it was part of Dig for Britain. |
| 0:20.8 | So immediately our back garden was part of Dig for Britain. So immediately, our back garden |
| 0:23.3 | was full of root vegetables, raspberries, strawberries. We like picking those. But mum said, if everybody |
| 0:30.9 | gave up sugar in their tea, in those days, not many people had coffee. Everybody had sugar |
| 0:36.8 | in their tea. If you gave up sugar in your tea, there would be some left to make a cake. And everybody did in the household give up sugar. |
| 0:45.1 | Guys, how do I find you today? I've had one hell of a week. I am. You don't only feel like you're slightly going mad because you've just done too many things. |
| 0:55.7 | There's been a lot of like after school activities, like millions of podcasts and talks, |
| 1:01.1 | which obviously I love doing, parents' evening. |
| 1:03.7 | It's like one of those weeks where there's no time for the gear change. |
| 1:08.5 | It's like one minute I'm podcasting and then I'm talking to a science |
| 1:12.1 | teacher about my kids' grades and I feel slightly mad, which probably means I need to pause at |
| 1:20.3 | some point like I'm sure many of you do. And maybe this episode is exactly that for you, like you time. |
| 1:27.4 | I highly encourage it for you and me. I |
| 1:30.8 | never give myself enough me time. So I'm wholeheartedly giving you listeners permission right now |
| 1:37.2 | to not multi-skill while you're listening to this if possible. If you can just like lay down on the |
| 1:42.7 | sofa or in bed, even better, or in the |
| 1:45.6 | bath, listen to me in the bath. Oh my God, the best. Look, if you are cracking on with doing a job |
| 1:51.0 | or you're out on a walk, whatever, enjoy. But let's just all try and give ourselves a bit of a |
... |
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