Barnsdale Gardens owner Nick Hamilton reflects on 40th anniversary and how dad Geoff Hamilton revolutionised Gardeners' World
It has been 40 years since Gardeners' World presenter Geoff Hamilton first turned the soil at Barnsdale Gardens where tens of thousands of keen gardeners and day trippers still flock each year.
As Barnsdale Gardens marks its 40th anniversary, reporter Chris Harby meets owner Nick Hamilton to find out what all the fuss is about.
"It must have been written in the stars - everything was just right."
When a Victorian farmhouse and five-and-a-half acres of land came up for sale, the timing was perfect.
Geoff Hamilton's TV career had taken off.
Having cultivated two rented acres on the Barnsdale Hall estate fit for magazine photoshoots, a guest appearance led to a permanent gig on the BBC's flagship show Gardeners' World in 1979.
Television crews now headed regularly to Rutland to film at the 'original Barnsdale'.
"Then in 1982, it was put up for sale and we had nowhere to live," Geoff's son Nick Hamilton recalls.
Fate then leant a hand when a new, bigger site came up for sale just a mile up the road along Barnsdale Avenue.
With a clear vision in mind, Geoff set to work creating a labyrinth of small gardens.
Walking between the 38 individual gardens now, the largest collection in Britain, it's easy to forget they were forged as television sets.
"Dad looked at the space and realised he needed to create smaller gardens within a bigger garden setting to film on TV," Nick explained.
"That was the foresight he had. He was a man way ahead of his time. And they're still catching up with him, particularly in television gardening."
Having long since chosen to join his father in the trade, Nick returned to Barnsdale in 1989 to set up a nursery and a neighbouring farmer's field was bought from the Exton estate.
The opening of the nursery with 'a big shed and 'one-and-a-half beds of plants' on Whitsun bank holiday in May 1990 would prove a landmark day.
Yet the main gardens remained a working set and only accessible via the small screen on a Friday evening.
"After my dad passed away we suddenly realised if we hadn't bought this piece of land there was no way we could have opened the TV gardens to the public," Nick recalled.
"There would have been no room for parking or the tea room."
Everything changed on August 4, 1996 when Geoff suffered a fatal heart attack.
"He'd had a mild stroke the year before so I was told what was in the will and that I was being left the garden," Nick recalled.
"Like a proper gardener he had spent all the money he had on the garden.
"The idea was for the nursery to be a gradual process so it wasn't independent when he died. I had to lay off staff which was very hard."
Somehow Nick managed to get the entire site ready for visitors in just eight months, opening on April 19, 1997.
"I worked very hard through the first winter with a small staff to set up the gardens," he said.
"That was a steep learning curve getting the place ready to cope with visitors - we're still tweaking bits even now.
"The transition from what it was to what it is now seems quite simple, but it has taken a lot of work."
Not that this is necessarily a complaint.
"In horticulture, if something needs doing you have to just get on and do it," Nick said.
"There were lots of long days, but when you enjoy what you do, it doesn't matter.
"Horticulture is a life choice - it's not a job."
Like many gardeners, working with nature is a passion that has endured through the downsides, notably the poor weather and, for the professionals, the industry's low wages.
"I'm 61 this year and have classic gardener's back, knees and toes," he reflects.
"I like to propagate. I've been in business as a professional horticulturalist for 42 years and still get excited when a cutting roots and seeds germinate."
Barnsdale now supports 16 full-time staff, led by head gardener Jon Brocklebank who arrived 28 years ago as a 17-year-old trainee.
There are also apprentices and willing volunteers, while returning university students bump staff levels above 30 in the busy summer months.
"I've always wanted to come to work to enjoy it and have a good time," Nick explained.
"That's the environment I encourage and that's what the staff get, and I think that makes an enjoyable environment for visitors."
A surge of interest following Geoff's death drew around 60,000 pilgrims annually to Barnsdale for the first four years which 'was too much'.
Now it has stabilised at a more manageable 30,000 to 35,000, although Nick is keen to convince more visitors that there's plenty to see in the 'dead' winter months.
With the winter lull set to lift as spring fast approaches, Barnsdale is gearing up for its anniversary year.
The main celebration of a long schedule of aniversary events is a garden party in August.
Barnsdale will also host a Gardeners' Question Forum the same month with head gardener Jon, Matt Biggs, from BBC radio show Gardeners' Question Time, and David Hurrion, associate editor of Gardeners' World magazine.
As to future plans, one of the courtyard gardens is to be transformed into a scented garden, while others remain in the owner's head, waiting to be scribbled down.
Yet while gardening has to move forward, it will be done at a pace sympathetic to its ethos and clientele.
While Geoff first established Barnsdale and its loyal following, it is Nick's vision and the graft of his team which removed the small screen barrier and opened up the gardens to everyone.
For Nick, the gardens are not a tourist attraction, but a place of education, an oversized classroom for the green-fingered.
"It's about being inspiring - helping people visualise what they can do in their own gardens," he said.
"If you go somewhere and see things that are unachievable for yourself, that isn't inspiring.
"It looks great here, but it's not a stately home garden where everything is pristine. It's not meant to be like that.
"You will come and see a few jobs that need doing here, but the point is if you're a gardener you want things to do.
"We want to be realistic. To inspire and not to depress."
It's a philosophy which his father would no doubt have approved of.
"I will always be immensely proud of what my dad achieved," he said.
"I spent all the time since he passed away thinking what a fantastic legacy the garden was to leave. But I only realised three or four years ago that actually his legacy isn't the garden.
"The garden was a great thing to leave, but it's a work in progress - it always changes.
"There are bits here that he would still recognise, but there is quite a lot that he wouldn't - the garden needs to keep moving on.
"His legacy is the thousands he encouraged to start gardening who came to know what a fantastic addition it is to their lives. I'm most proud of that."
Barnsdale is a place of ghosts. It's hard to escape the spirit of its founding father here.
Not that there is any wish to. As if to make the point, a pair of Geoff's weathered gardening jeans, standing proud in wellies, greets visitors on their way in.
Even Nick admits it took a while to accept Barnsdale was now his garden to manage rather than to tend for his dad.
"I'm also aware he would be immensely proud of what we have achieved since he passed away.
"I have no doubts about that, but I have in mind that my dad will always be associated with Barnsdale.
"I will always be the son of Geoff Hamilton, but I've ploughed my own furrow."
