Gardener’s World: How I Garden: Easy ideas & inspiration for making beautiful gardens anywhere

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My design Chelsea: Chelsea Flower Show star Adam Frost shares his favourite London secret spots". 19 May 2015. Enjoying your garden is about more than just what you grow; it's also about why you grow it. As well as spending time outdoors, the meaning of a garden lies in what you bring inside, from vegetables and herbs to make a family meal to flowers and seedheads to decorate the house. Adam explores how his own garden has allowed him to enjoy the simple pleasures in life and create precious memories - whether it's coming down in the morning and seeing that single flower in a vase or teaching your kids how to make the runner bean chutney that reminds you of your nan. Adam's inspiring book will guide you through all you need to make your garden thrive, and to use it to develop your own traditions and meaningful moments. Read more Details

Adam suggests summing up your garden with a word. It could be ‘calm’ or ‘romantic’. ‘Then,’ he says, ‘assess something you want to buy against that word. Tell yourself that if it’s not ‘romantic’ or ‘calm’, then it’s not coming home.’ Finally…Give it a whole growing season before you make changes. Don’t be in a hurry to slash and burn. You may inadvertently take out something that could have been a godsend.’ Geoff said that if everyone gardened, the world would be a more peaceful place and he was right.” At that time, Adam had no wish to emulate Hamilton’s TV career and his slot on GW was blink and you’d miss it. “Geoff needed someone to walk on set carrying a tree, lower it into a hole, then walk off again.”

This certainly resonates with me. When we first moved in, we were determined to get rid of a large cypress ‘Leylandii’.

Finally…

First you have your mature trees – your oaks and beeches. Then there are the smaller, younger trees.’ As an unhappy child, Adam escaped as much as he could to his grandparents. It was from them, rather than his landscape gardener father, that his love of gardening started. Presenters: Aasmah Mir, Luke Jones; Producer: Louise Corley; Editor: Beverley Purcell (20 April 2019). "Patti Boulaye". Saturday Live. 46:16 minutes in. BBC. BBC Radio 4 . Retrieved 26 April 2019. He views his TV career as an enjoyable bonus. Before GW, he had done a few TV appearances as his reputation as a designer grew (he has won seven Chelsea golds).

When we moved into our house, I walked the space every evening and every morning, so that I really understood it.’ There are two posts that may be helpful here: what makes a good wildlife garden and how to plant a mini-wildflower meadow. The landscaper also has his own garden design company called Adam Frost Design, based near his home in Stamford, Lincolnshire. Adam Frost's health struggles The eldest of three and with exams looming, Adam was sent on ahead to Devon to live with an aunt whose hippy lifestyle was, he says, an eye-opener. His family’s arrival only worsened matters, with his parents separating then swapping partners with another couple. Adam’s relationship with his father was already fraught. “His downfall was drink. He was fun to be around until the fifth or sixth pint and then you’d get the slap and you’d live in fear of that.” Adam’s day job is garden design, but this year he is doing 20 days of filming for GW, five of them as its host. He will be presenting at Chelsea, Tatton and Hampton Court flower shows, and at the GW Live show in August. He is an RHS ambassador and is working on two books: one on DIY garden projects, and the other on how to get more from your outdoor space, both to be published in 2022.Get to know your garden before you do anything,’ says Adam. He himself has recently moved into a new house and garden. Before doing his own garden redesign, he’s followed his own advice: He began his gardening career after a difficult teenagehood, which saw him living on his own above a pizza parlour. In an interview with The Times, having left school at 16 with CSEs, he said it seemed he had the choice of becoming a chef, joining the army or a gardener - he chose the latter because he recalled a happy childhood playing about in his grandparents' garden and allotments. At 21? I was too busy down the pub with my mates,” he says. At the interview he was bowled over by Hamilton. “I’d never been in the presence of someone charismatic before and I remember thinking ‘wow’. I think it was Geoff’s understated passion for horticulture that got me.” Most viewers will know and love Adam Frost for being a positive and upbeat presence on Gardener's World regularly, but recently, the landscaper has opened up about his struggles with his physical and mental health.

He also loves talking to schoolchildren as an RHS ambassador. Pupils are responsive when he tells them how he turned a miserable start into success, even if a recurring question tends to be “Hey mister, what car do you drive?” I’m sorry to confess that I was not one of those who had tested their soil. He explained that it was essential. When he moved into his own new garden, he tested the soil in dozens of places, and even though he thought he could tell what it was like just by what was growing there, he still had quite a few surprises. The problem is exacerbated by modern impatience. “We’ve created a society where if you want something you can have it straight away. One of the most beautiful things for me in a garden is that it does things at its own pace and you have to fall in with that.After his debut at the RHS Chelsea Garden in 2007, he has gardened for the likes of Land’s End, QVC, Honda, Volkswagen and even designed the Homebase garden at RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2013. I’ll go into the ground when my time is up, still knowing only half of what I could know because [in gardening] you just carry on learning, especially as the environment changes.” While his own children have yet to show an interest in a horticultural or TV career, Sulina is a convert. He told the publication: "I was sat in front of a psychiatrist and a doctor and said, 'You know, I've got burn-out and depression,' which was a surprise as I only went into the room with Covid. The wheels came off a little bit." In the talk to the Painters Forstal Gardening Club, Adam showed us how important repetition is. He advised us against planting a clump of one thing followed by a clump of another. For example,’ says Adam, ‘you might instinctively want to remove a hedge and have a fence, but you’d be taking out a massive wildlife habitat. It’s really worth thinking about, and being sure that you’re doing the right thing.’ Every garden has a micro-climate