Have you always wanted a career in horticulture? Or, as your new book suggests, maybe you'd have loved to have been a sportsman?
I've always been very keen on sports and had I been good enough at any of them I may well have gone down that route. I never seriously thought about it because I was always okay, but never the best. For example, I played left back in the football team at school and managed to score more goals each season than our striker. Unfortunately, they were own goals!
No, ever since I was a little boy, I always had a plot in the garden. The problem was that when I was growing up, my dad was a landscape gardener, and you don't take little kids on the job with you. Had he had a plant nursery or the garden centre then, I'd have been involved when I was much younger, so I didn't get that experience then, but the interest was always there.
Did your dad encourage you to take up a career in horticulture?
Dad had a really great way of bringing up his children; I mention one example in my book. Geoff had said when I fell over in
