Voicing the Garden – Trainees in the 1940s and 1950s

From growing his first bean plant in a jam pot at school, David was inspired to work in horticulture. He spent two years with his friend Mike Pollock at the Garden and recalls the sense of learning they enjoyed while there in the late 1950s and the wider horticultural focus still being on post-war food production at that time.

Dropping out of school at the age of 16, Allen Paterson was taken on as an ‘Improver’ at the Garden in 1949. He progressed to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and began a teaching career before taking up a Curatorship of the Chelsea Physic Garden. This led to a Directorship of Royal Botanical Gardens in Canada.

Mike applied to Cambridge University Botanic Garden after reading an article describing it as ‘a Garden with a future’. He describes the wonderful rich characters in the Garden, as he worked on finishing the Limestone Rock Garden and the new Scented Garden as a trainee.

Working in the Glasshouses in the 1950s Ramsay recalls the wonderful Judas Tree which was ‘like a waterfall of pink flowers’.

Peter grew up in Cambridge with his father in the role of Head Gardener at St John’s College. He joined the Botanic Garden as a horticultural student in the early 1950s. Peter went on to follow a long and distinguished career in education, becoming Senior Lecturer in Landscape Management at the University of Bath. He was presenter of the BBC’s Victorian Kitchen Garden television series and Horticultural Director for the Eden Project.