Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A garden designer known for creating gardens from Scotland to Israel to Japan and for museum exhibitions of his work.
On the island
Eight records
Marvin Gaye Got to Give It Up and it's always a trap whenever it comes on that makes me want to dance and I love to dance and I'm imagining that I might have just eaten, I've got sand between my toes on the island and what's beautiful about this piece is that it's got a built-in audience so I've got all these people who are in that flickering light of the bonfire helping me enjoy this piece too.
Fela Kuti, one of the things I love about his music is it always takes a very long and slow time to build. And I see it very graphically as it's building and evolving. And it's very much like the way I put my planting plans together. So you get one thing providing you with a bass note that may continue or drop off. You get something else coming in to allow a contrast. There's a tremendous energy in this music that always sweeps me along. So I'd be really very happy to have this wonderful long 12 minute track with me on the island.
Cape Bush Under the Ivy is just a very simple song. It's a story about going into a garden which is overgrown with ivy and it always reminds me of Hill Cottage, this wonderful place that we were brought up in, the place that was my place of discovery.
I love Jeff Buckley's music. I think he has a tremendous capacity to sweep you into a piece. And this piece, the Corpus Christi Carol, is set to a Benjamin Britton version. It's an exquisitely sung, perfectly beautiful piece that always teeters me on the edge of tears every time I hear it. And I'll be very, very happy to be sitting there enjoying that as part of my experience of being alone.
This is David Bowie Wild as the Wind. When I was trying to select my music, I was looking at the Nina Simone version of Wild as the Wind. And I'd been torn because I've listened to so much David Bowie over the years. And when I alighted upon Wild as the Wind, it kind of knocked Nina out. And I was very interested when I started reading up about why he recorded it. And he'd been to see her in Los Angeles and have met her and been so inspired by her that he'd recorded it for himself. And I just think this is the most beautiful, beautiful love song. You know, one line in it, you're spring to me, you're all things to me, your life itself. It's just such an amazing thing.
Nick Drake is an artist I wished had lived longer. I know all his music and listen to it a lot, but Riverman always comes back as being a central piece. I think it has a lovely languid quality, his voice is so strong, the guitar is powerful and there's this wonderful string sequence that sweeps you away and allows you to be lost in this beautiful song.
Vespro della Beata Vergine (Gloria Patri)Favourite
La Petite Bande / Les Arts Florissants (members)
The Monteverdi Vespers are a magical, absolutely magical piece of music. And I lost my lovely dad in March last year. And when we were selecting music for his funeral, I went through his music collection and found the Vespers, which I'd remembered and must have been deep inside me. And I love the fact that you've got these two voices calling to each other and responding. And I imagine myself maybe sat on the edge of a lagoon with this sound calling from one side of the bay to the other, feeling very happy to be part of the human race.
This is Grace Jones, and my mum brought this into the house. She did a fashion show for her students every year at Winchester. And she used to run up and down our living room, pretending to be on the catwalk, to check the timing for the show. And I remember her doing this to this fantastic album. And I went to see Grace Jones a few years ago, and she's just such a larger-than-life, enormous, charismatic person. I couldn't be on the island without her.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:25What do you think gardens, our gardens, are for?
I think they are a place of escape and a place of immersion. They're somewhere where you can be yourself completely. I think they provide you with an enormous amount of freedom, and I've always found that that's the place that I've felt happiest and most myself.
Presenter asks
4:40What were your specific aims in designing the garden for Maggie's Cancer Centre at Charing Cross Hospital?
We had an amazing client and really good connection with the architects. And they do, through the inclusion of gardens in every project that they've done, draw this connection between the power of greenery and living things that have their own pace and their own life force and their ability to allow you to connect with something that has its own momentum, that is going to continue regardless of whether you're there or not. And one of the things we wanted to do was to make the garden really wrap and be part of the building. So you have a walk through greenery and through trees and through shadows to get to the front door.
Presenter asks
12:18How would you describe yourself as a little boy? Quite solitary?
Yes, I was very happy being alone in the garden, and I did have my friends, but they were all adults, and I didn't really feel like I needed friends. I felt like a misfit at school. I didn't really get school until I went to a middle school.
The keepsakes
The book
an encyclopedia of plants of the region
Plants can be your ally, and I certainly don't want them to be working against me. I want to know what's around me and how to use it, and I would find that endlessly fascinating.
The luxury
the contents of my potting shed
The luxury it's maybe a big ask, but I was wondering if I could take the contents of my potting shed.
Presenter asks
17:20What happened in the Picos Mountains in Spain that you described as an epiphany?
I spent some time walking up mountainsides, from meadows through fringes of woodland up to snow melt, seeing things growing in the wild in natural combinations. And suddenly everything made sense. When you see a plant growing in the wild, you know what it likes and why it grows there and what it grows with. And I knew at that point that I wanted to garden like that, to emulate nature in the way that I garden.
Presenter asks
19:09Have you ever been able to stand in any of your own gardens and feel the same feeling as when you stood in [the Valley of Flowers] in the Himalayas?
I think I have. I think I have. And that's something you're constantly striving for. So those moments can often be just ten seconds, you know, when the light's just right. You know it's never going to happen again. But for that moment you think, Yes, I've done it. I've done it for now.
Presenter asks
31:07If you were to pass on one gem of advice to all the gardeners listening, what would it be?
I think you have to work with things that you love. I don't think you can compromise. So you have to choose the things that you really want to be close to you and grow them as well as you possibly can.
“I think they [gardens] are a place of escape and a place of immersion. They're somewhere where you can be yourself completely. I think they provide you with an enormous amount of freedom, and I've always found that that's the place that I've felt happiest and most myself.”
“The way I garden is to let things go almost to the brink of being lost, and that's often quite a frightening thing to do. It often unnerves my clients.”
“I'd much rather listen to a wood pigeon, or the sound of seeds pinging out of pods on a hot day.”
“Why don't you follow your heart? And it was the best thing that anybody ever said to me, because what I was thinking was that I couldn't do my passion, or I shouldn't do my passion as a profession. And she said, Well, why on earth not?”
“I lost my lovely dad in March last year. And when we were selecting music for his funeral, I went through his music collection and found the Vespers, which I'd remembered and must have been deep inside me. And I love the fact that you've got these two voices calling to each other and responding. And I imagine myself maybe sat on the edge of a lagoon with this sound calling from one side of the bay to the other, feeling very happy to be part of the human race.”
“I think I'm looking forward to a sense of discovery. I want to treat the island as a garden, and what I would do is make it a mission to find all the special places and make a kind of series of chapters that connect through a walk that will lead from contrasting place to contrasting place. I will want a garden there, so one of these places will be a garden, but some of them might be just a very gently manipulated place under a tree or somewhere with a view that allows me to think about good things.”