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. As a child in the 20s she recalls the excitement of planting and

growing in the family garden, but it wasn't until the 50s when her own children

went away to school that she began a serious study of the subject. Completely self-taught in middle age she went on to develop a career of it,

designing some of the most beautiful gardens in Britain, not least her own at Barnsley House in Gloucestershire.

She's now written 14 books, enjoys an international

reputation and numbers royalty and the rich and famous among her clients. To be honest, she says,

I'm really frightfully stupid about plants, but I do have a feel for what they will

look like. She is Rosemary Vere. So do you have difficulty then when you say you're

frightfully stupid about them Rosemary remembering all those Latin names? Is that the

problem?

No, I think so that I can remember the names all right, but I'm not, I've never had, I should have

studied botany at university rather than what I did and then I would know far more about horticulture and I think

that there are so many people these days who are really learned about it.

So do you feel intimidated by them? No, oddly enough I don't feel intimidated by them because I know perfectly well that I have learnt a different way. I've learned by the field of the soil and knowing when seeds should be sown and I know when

you should take cuttings, not because I've been taught it, but because I've learned it from the

field with my hands and I've done it for so long.

But there must nevertheless be times when you know you're designing a garden or talking to someone about how they should plan theirs

and you just can't remember the name of the plant that you're trying to think

Oh yes then I just so right I'll send your I'll send your drawing when I get

home but have you therefore you know have you got a computer so that you can if you want to choose a brilliant red flower or an on a

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