n By Duncan Milligan
“Do bison fart and burp?”, Bob Flowerdew asks as we sit in his
warm garden den which doubles as a library. He queries whether current emissions of methane from UK cows are more or less than were those from bison in the US.
He chuckles and I promise I’ll check (the answer is bison do fart and burp). It’s an amusing and interesting digression about methane and climate change. But it might explain why some are keen to move the conversation away from the impact of fossil fuels and fracking towards farting livestock.
As well as a mischievous sense of humour, Flowerdew is blessed with the sort of rich, resonant voice loved by radio producers and audiences. He is very engaging, with twinkling blues eyes and a long, single, braided plait of hair.
He’s been described to me as gardening royalty. And I can see why.
Flowerdew is a renowned panellist on BBC Radio 4’s Gardeners’ Question Time (GQT) for over 30 years. For three
years he was a presenter on BBC2’s Gardeners’ World.
GQT has 2m listeners a week, while Gardeners’ World only manages 2.5m viewers per broadcast.
For comparison, the much higher profile BBC1 Match of the Day brings in 2.6m viewers on a Saturday night.
The GQT format has a panel of experts travel around the UK being quizzed by amateur gardeners. The audience bring their gardening problems and seek solutions.
Flowerdew joined the panel in 1994 after a major revamp. It was almost by accident. “I was an audience member who asked a question about an organic solution to a problem.”
The question interested the programme’s producers at a time when organic growing was becoming more mainstream. He is, of course, an expert in the field.
To date, Flowerdew has written 36 books which have gone through 70 editions and been translated into a dozen languages. What, I ask, explains our enduring love affair with growing?
“It’s natural, it’s built in”, says Flowerdew. “It’s not out of absolute necessity, but we do it.
“Gardening gives us a way, especially for children, of exploring and understanding the natural world. We learn the importance of tending, nurturing and patience. It helps us understand the rhythm of nature.
And, in terms of growing to eat, how we can improve health by eating better. Grow your own, eat your own. You don’t need a lot of space, you can grow lots of types of fruit and veg in buckets or bags.
“What you eat will be very fresh. But grow for your own reasons – for fun, for taste or to be organic. Buy the basics in the shops. Just try growing what you want to eat.”
When the rain stops he invites me into the half acre garden of the house where he has lived for over 40 years. I’m expecting to find something out of a garden makeover programme.
But no. It’s recycling heaven. I walk on old radiators used as a path which is lined with buckets of strawberries hanging from recycled scaffolding (the slugs can’t climb the scaffolding).
Strips of old carpets are used to suppress weeds and trap slugs. A reservoir has been made of old tyres lined with plastic and water is gravity fed to the rest of the garden.
A large polytunnel has another polytunnel within. It creates some magic; after a cold, wet winter I don’t expect to find perfectly ripened oranges.
Gardening, as it turns out, is a mix of engineering, science and art. “Science gives us the facts, art is how we apply it,” he tells me.
This is where Flowerdew experiments, his living laboratory. A bit like Poirot, he says, but trying to solve the mysteries of growing.
It turns out he started as an engineer and had taken the first steps to becoming an RAF pilot (he had his pilot’s licence before his driving licence). When the RAF suggested he had the skills to be a navigator, it was not for him.
31 uniteLANDWORKER Spring 2024
After a brief spell in accountancy in the City of London he was off on his travels to Europe and the US. In the early 80s he returned to Norfolk, landscape gardening and horticulture.
Flowerdew has long been a notable and passionate advocate for organic gardening and farming.
“It’s easy to be organic in your own
garden.You can taste the difference and obviously it’s fresher. With organic meat there are pronounced differences compared to conventional meat. The texture and flavour are different.”
Flowerdew is passionate and eloquent about what motivates him and what concerns him. One big issue is climate change.
“At one point I thought I wouldn’t really see climate change in my lifetime, but it would be an issue for my children and grandchildren.
“But it’s here and now and its already impacting on the weather. Here, for example, it’s milder, more rain, more frequent and persistent flooding.
“There have been fewer frosts and that impacts on some plants and trees. Some of them need a cold, dormant period before the spring and they’re missing out on that.
“Climate change means it’s more difficult to grow some crops. That can lead to wildlife changes, so nature becomes out of sync.”
And that’s where we get back to comparing the relative methane inputs and outputs of bison farts versus cow farts. There may be nothing more out of sync with nature than the UK replacing cows with bison.
As I left I noticed a photo of Bob meeting the then Prince of Wales, now King Charles, another advocate of organic farming. And I realised I had indeed been in the presence of gardening royalty.
Find out more Visit:
bobflowerdew.com
Peter Everard Smith
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