COTSWOLD Gardening
Garden extraordinaire
Born in a Victorian London terrace where every inch of ground outside had been crazy-paved, gardening writer and broadcaster, Tony Russell didn’t, on the surface, seem destined for a career as a leading expert in trees and woodland. But he told Sue Smith how one of his first memories as a tiny tot was of walking through some bright coloured dahlias and of his current ambition to create a Himalayan garden in Snowdonia.
THE dahlias Tony remembers were in his grandfather’s garden, towering way above his head and he can still see the jewel-like colours swaying in the wind. “My father had no interest in the
aesthetics of flowers,” says Tony “he had an allotment and put all his energy into growing vegetables. “I think my love of trees and
plants skipped a generation and filtered down from my grandfather. “He had spent three years on the
Western Front so nothing phased him and when he came back from the war the garden was his refuge. “He had an old Anderson shelter
as a potting shed and I have fond memories of whiling away endless hours in the garden with him. “I remember him getting me to
shin up a huge peach tree when I was a child to shake down the fruit and woe betide if any of it got damaged.” When he left school, Tony had
no idea what he wanted to do and fell into designing kitchens. “I suppose you could say I was
working with trees in a way making wooden kitchens,” he laughs. But he had a hankering to live in
the countryside and he was looking at a way to make a living working outdoors. “I had narrowed it down to
becoming a farmer or a forester,” he says.
“At the time, a girlfriend’s
brother was taking forestry exams and it was like a light bulb going off in my head.” Tony went back to college to
study forestry and horticulture. From there he arrived at the
country’s prestigious arboretum at Westonbirt where he was head forester for 13 years. Over that time his expertise was
often called upon with opportunities to write books and appear on TV and radio. One day, mortgaged up to the
hilt and with two small children to support, he came home to his wife Rosie and asked if she would mind if he gave up the day job. “To her credit she said she didn’t
mind as long as I could convince her there was a day job to go back to,” says Tony. But neither of them have had
cause to look back. Tony has now written eight
books, has stayed in demand as a broadcaster, presenting TV series such as Roots & Shoots, Garden Trail and Britain’s Greatest Trees. And today he works closely with
the Forestry Commission and the National Trust and leads tours for enthusiasts to exotic gardens all over the world. He is currently working on a
new book and TV programme looking at ways of saving the great
70 COTSWOLDESSENCE | September - November 2013
www.cotswoldessence.co.uk
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