One of Chris Beardshaw’s early television incarnations was as The Flying
Gardener, which ran for four series in the early 2000s. In the programmes he
would whizz around the country in a helicopter, dropping in to sort out
stricken patches like some sort of horticultural bush doctor. Nowadays, the
38-year-old’s feet are more firmly on the ground, and his work is
concentrated on such deeply rooted hardy perennials of the nation’s
green-fingered psyche as the RHS Chelsea Flower Show (where he won a gold
medal last year for his show garden) and BBC Radio 4’s Gardeners’ Question
Time. He also has a new series for ITV coming out in the spring and runs a
landscape design consultancy.
Standing admiring the panoramic views across the countryside from the roof of
his home, it is obvious that Beardshaw’s head for heights extends further
than flying. For “home”, where he lives with his girlfriend and young
family, is an ornately decorated red-brick Victorian former water tower just
outside Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire, and we are 63ft up. Attached to each
wall is a metal rail that doubles as a support for a fire ladder and
somewhere to which Beardshaw can attach his abseiling ropes. Abseiling is
not just a hobby: it is how he cleans the windows — although he admits:
“Take a look at the windows. It’s not very often.”
Beardshaw bought the Grade II-listed Mythe Water Tower in 2002 for £225,000.
So why did such a seemingly sensible bloke with no obvious bent towards
eccentricity or showing off buy such a peculiar place in which to set up
home? Despite the fact that it is on a busy road, “we fell in love with the
building”, he says, as if that’s how one should feel, obviously, when
confronted with a great block of industrial red bricks with just over
1,000sq ft of living space spread over five floors. The building had been
sold off by the local water authority and had already been converted into a
residential space in 1987, with windows punched through the brickwork.
“It had been quite cynically done,” says Beardshaw. “It looked as if it had
been converted and lived in by someone who watched too much daytime
television, and it was all really temporary. We looked at it and decided
someone needed to look after it.”
So much work needed doing on the building that it was not until just over
three years ago that Beardshaw turned his attention to the ¼-acre plot
surrounding it. The titles of some of his television programmes — The Great
Garden Challenge and Hidden Gardens — come to mind as he tells of how it was
completely covered by scrub, which he hacked back and removed without
recourse to herbicides. “Persistence has nearly paid off,” he says.
Dominating the garden is a large raised area, reached by steps and sporting
black iron structures around its edges that look like decorative Chinese
lanterns. In fact, they are breather pipes, sitting on top of a 19,000ft³
reservoir originally used to hold water from the nearby rivers Severn and
Avon before being pumped into the tower, from where it would be fed by
gravity to local houses. The tank is partly buried, and Beardshaw uses the
surface water that collects in it to irrigate the garden in summer, but it
could be converted to create further accommodation. “It’s potentially a play
space,” he says. “Everyone who has come to the building has a different
idea: a squash court, sound studio, nightclub or swimming pool have been
suggested.”
On the 2ft of heavy clay soil on top of the reservoir, Beardshaw has laid down
a lawn edged with borders. With three RHS shows this year to create,
including one at Chelsea celebrating 100 years of Hidcote, one of England’s
most famous gardens, he admits his own garden would not stand up to such
inspection.
“In a show garden, you expect people to analyse what you are doing and expect
it to absolutely sing. Here I am not worried. It’s a bit like cobblers’
shoes, I suppose — when you go to a gardener’s garden what you end up with
is a collection of abstract plants. All I see is the weeds that need pulling
up and the experiments that have worked or not worked. I look at it more as
a lab where I can play around with plants and not really worry about them
being examined.”
Like many gardeners with a lifelong knowledge of plants (he started working —
part-time, of course — in a nursery at the age of 11 and is trained in both
horticulture and landscape design), Beardshaw does himself down. Admittedly,
at this time of year the garden is not looking its best — wintry skeletons
of plants such as Jerusalem artichokes are at all angles, and fallen leaves
cover the soil — but, with 3,500 herbaceous plants waiting to stir, it will
come into its own later in the year. “These are plants grown for shows,
given to us at shows, or that people send us. You develop a somewhat
eclectic palette. We experiment, we play with things, we try to find the
right combinations, we dig them up, we move them,” he says.
Another legacy from a previous show garden at Hampton Court, a wooden
“contemporary pergola”, creates some structure and a focal point at the back
of the grassy area — Beardshaw is loath to give it such a grand title as a
lawn. “I’ve never been a big fan of lawns. If you have time to manage a good
lawn, then that’s fantastic, but I don’t really.” Beetle, his weimaraner, is
happily charging about the place, kicking up the grass and stomping on
plants as she goes. “As you can see, my dog shows a great deal of reverence
toward my horticultural skills. When you have one of these, the last thing
you want is a bowling green.”
Anyway, dog owner or not, Beardshaw is very much from the contemporary
laissez-faire school of gardening. “I like to leave the garden to relax
during the winter. We have been conditioned in Britain to think that we have
to be tidy gardeners; that every time a leaf hits the ground you have to
rake it up. That is not the way nature does things. Okay, you can do it on a
lawn (otherwise the grass turns yellow). On borders and beds, leaf mulch is
exactly what the soil needs.”
Tucked in at ground level by the steps to the top of the reservoir is
Beardshaw’s studio. As befits a structure built by a firm called Ecospace
and the organic nature of the garden, it has a green roof, which is at
nearly the same level as the “rooftop” lawn and garden. In summer it is a
mass of flowers and is extremely low-maintenance, although Beardshaw weeds
it for the occasional dandelion.
Green roofs are becoming increasingly popular on garden sheds and even modern
houses, but Beardshaw sounds a note of warning. “You have to grow native
sedums; I don’t think anything else really works.” Also, “you can get away
with growing it on about 2in of mesh geotextile. Lots of people put down a
felt and then sow into that with a very thin soil, and I don’t think that
works; it dries out far too much”. His, however, stayed green all through
last year’s hot summer, and in full flower.
Down at ground level and sheltered between the warm west wall of the tower and
the glasshouse, Beardshaw is experimenting in a quartet of raised beds with
polyculture. Instead of raising vegetables using a traditional rotation
system, in which the nutrients taken from the soil by one group of
vegetables are replaced in later years by others, this is a method whereby
you grow lots of different things all together.
“You are mixing flowers and vegetables,” he explains. “You sow them all at
once; mix all the seeds together with sand, broadcast and rake in. The idea
is that when your initial crops are harvested, you then sow into the gaps
that are left. Because you are planting all of your plants in one area, but
none of them intensively, what you end up with is no depletion of a
particular nutrient or mineral. You are growing flowers, so it looks
attractive, but you are also attracting beneficial insects.”
The seedlings of this year’s crop are just starting to come through, but
Beardshaw might not be around to harvest it, as the tower is on the market —
he needs more space for his business. He plans to stay in the area, as it
has good accessibility to the rest of the country, but is faced with quite a
problem: “Where do you go after a building like this?” As to a potential
buyer: “Whoever buys this has to be a little bit odd, in the nicest possible
way. You have got to have a sense of humour.”
Strong knees, a good memory (it’s a long way up if you have left something in
the bedroom) and a head for heights would also be an advantage.
Mythe Water Tower is for sale for £475,000 with Knight Frank, 01242 246
959, www.knightfrank.co.uk
