“He said how he set up Habitat, and how if I need to follow a dream, then follow it.”


Over the years, Adam’s talked frankly about suffering from fibromyalgia – a condition that causes musculoskeletal pain, accompanied by fatigue, sleep memory and mood issues – and narrated a film on Morning Live about it, although he stresses that some media reports since have blown things out of proportion.


“It was diagnosed 20 years ago and have learned to live with it,” he explains.


Meanwhile Adam is delighted that Sulina – to whom he’s been married for 25 years - is now on the road to recovery and how their new house really does feel like home for his family, not forgetting Ash the cat who has become a firm favourite on Gardeners’ World and even appears on the cover of the new book.


“We’re getting there,” he says. “We keep on keeping on. The garden helps a lot: it teaches patience. Sometimes it’s just the physicality of going out and doing simple tasks, such as a little bit of weeding while your mind is full of stuff, that I find to be quite rewarding.


Adam, himself a dad of four, was able to repair their relationship when he was older and is sanguine about his early experiences, recognising that while some periods were difficult, he was also able to make the most of opportunities that came his way.


18


“I don’t regret any of it, it makes you who you are. I wouldn’t change any of it. If you change a bit of it, you change all of it.”


Adam’s working life began in the North Devon Parks Department before going to work for former Gardeners’ World presenter Geoff Hamilton, whose sudden death in 1996 at the age of 60 shocked many. They worked on many of the gardens at Barnsdale together and Adam was able to absorb much of the older man’s thinking on soil health and against the use of pesticides and herbicides.


“I went to work for him when I was 21. He was a man completely ahead of his time.


“He would always say, ‘the answer’s in the soil, boy’. He was right, and in a similar way to what the King was saying over the years, he was getting absolutely mullered, but now so much of it has come to the fore.


“I don’t think you see it when you’re in it as a youngster, but as you get older and look back and say ‘wow, wasn’t I privileged to be in that company’.


“Never did I think that one day I’d follow in his footsteps and be on Gardeners’ World.”


It was Geoff who encouraged Adam to study garden design, sending him to train with the renowned landscape architect David Stevens.


Later Adam set up his own company and subsequently met the late designer Terence Conran, founder of the retail chain Habitat.


“He’s probably the reason I ended up doing Chelsea, between him and David Stevens,” says Adam.


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“Sometimes it’s good to garden with somebody else, such as a groups or a couple. Then you can sit back and enjoy the fruits of your labours.


“Gardening is one big experiment: it doesn’t matter how much you know or don’t know, there’s so much to get from it.”


Get tickets to see Adam at the RHS Malvern Spring Show: https://rhsmalvern.co.uk


For the Love of Plants – Over 150 plants to bring joy to your garden and your life – by Adam Frost is published in hardback by DK and is available in all good book shops, priced £22.


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