Hello, I'm Krestey 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 1994, and the presenter was Sue Lawley. My castaway this week is a gardener, now in her 60s she was born in Ulster and brought up steeped in the politics of the province where her brothers were influential members of the Unionist party.

She went to Cambridge and having married settled down to look after the garden of the beautiful

house in Somerset her marriage had brought with it. 25 years later she wrote her

first book all about that garden and since then she's become one of this country's foremost experts on

gardens and their design. Particularly famous for her work at the National Trust

Garden at Tintinhull, she is in constant demand as a lecturer and author. She is Penelope Hobhouse. You said

Penny your work is a constant joy so presumably you don't mind being in

constant demand. Now is it the gardening that's a joy or the talking about it, which

is it? I think I really probably like the writing best or because of the writing. Of course I do a lot

of garden design and the two things combine in making you

continually or in a sort of learning process all the time because when you're

designing you've got to get your vision across to

your clients so you've really got to know what you're talking about and of course

writing even more so really.

So it's the planning of it and the thinking about it.

It's not the getting your hands dirty.

Oh, I hope you don't think, I mean I love gardening and if anybody said what is my recreation and pleasure that is

gardening the others work I can't imagine you get a pleasure from weeding yes I do

I mean no no I really love it I'm very energetic physically I've always been and I love

weeding. I mean it's like cleaning the bath on something you make it look beautiful.

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