Changing times for West Dean head gardener Tom Brown

SussexWorld

West Dean head gardener Tom Brown took up his job shortly before a time which changed everything – the pandemic.

Transcript

00:00 Good morning, my name is Phil here at Group Arts and Design at Sussex Newspapers and also

00:06 Chairman of the Festival of Chichester. And one of the events of the Festival of Chichester

00:10 that I'm looking forward to most this year will be on Monday, June 24th in the Assembly

00:17 Room, North Street, Chichester, when I will be in conversation with Tom Brown, Head Gardener

00:23 at West Dean. Tom, sitting in front of me now. It's going to be great fun to chat about

00:28 this wonderful garden, isn't it? And you arrived at a difficult time, you were saying,

00:32 well, you didn't know it was difficult at the time, but you arrived not long before

00:36 lockdown changed absolutely everything. How on earth did you cope? That was quite a baptism,

00:42 wasn't it really? It definitely was. It was just long enough to kind of get my feet under

00:49 the table and get to grips with what went on just before it all changed hugely. And

00:56 we, the garden team and the 100 acre garden that we sort of run around and try and manage,

01:04 just everything had to stop. The gardeners were furloughed. We had one member of staff

01:08 on site and we just had to prioritise the greenhouse collections and keep all of those

01:13 alive because they were such a rich collection of plants that had been collected over about

01:18 30 years by my predecessors, Jim and Sarah, that we had to look after those. So it meant

01:24 that Mother Nature was definitely in charge for about eight months. And after that time,

01:29 when the gardeners started to come back and the volunteers started to come back, we've

01:33 got about 60 volunteers that help us try and keep on top of this big space. We started

01:39 to see the garden looking very differently, how it had responded to being let go. Some

01:46 of the wildflowers that we were seeing in some of the meadows we hadn't seen before

01:50 because we've managed them more intensely. So that taught us a lot of lessons, but also

01:54 things like box blight and box moth and ash dieback, which a lot of gardeners in the area

02:00 will be battling too. We just realised that we had to sort of work with nature a bit more

02:06 rather than trying to control it. So it gave us this lovely moment.

02:09 Isn't that fascinating that you learnt by having to let go?

02:13 Yeah, yeah, certainly. And it's finding joy in gardening as well. And that sort of obsessive

02:20 need to control and manage things. You don't necessarily experience that enjoyment or that

02:28 sort of contentment with what you're trying to do. You can walk through a wonderful rose

02:33 garden and not look at the roses and just concentrate on the weeds that are underneath

02:37 them. And then where's the joy in that? So you do have to sort of present a garden and

02:43 demonstrate a competence in horticulture because there's a huge joy in that as well.

02:48 But that's such an important word, joy, isn't it? In any job, whatever you do, joy is just

02:54 crucial, isn't it? Tell me more about the joy in gardening and we'll explore this on

02:58 the night for the Festival of Chichester much more, I'm sure. But what is the joy in gardening

03:02 for you?

03:04 It's experiencing things, it's seeing plants growing successfully where you've planted

03:10 them rather than trying to, it's like pushing a big rock uphill, isn't it? If you can, it's

03:14 a constant struggle. So if you're trying to plant the wrong plant in the wrong place and

03:18 it's not growing very well and you're throwing food and water and sprays at it to try and

03:22 get it to grow, to actually pop a plant in the ground and watch it flourish because it's

03:27 in the right space is joyful. And to see the way that it engages with biodiversity and

03:34 insects and birds and how they can share your space and you're not excluding them. So everybody

03:41 buys into this whole space, I think is hugely joyful. And it's a much wider ecosystem and

03:46 a way of gardening than say, in a pot where you try to control every leaf and every petal.

03:53 Yeah. And part of the joy is the joy that visitors get from just being there. I mean,

03:59 it's such a wonderful place to be, isn't it, West End Gardens?

04:03 It is. And you can get so caught up in the day to day. I remember during lockdown, we

04:08 had some young trees that had been knocked about by some sheep, which I had to go and

04:12 protect and I was up on the hill looking down on the garden and the college and the estate

04:18 beyond. I just thought this is a moment. There's nobody for miles around. But what a magical

04:24 special place, sort of untouched in a lot of ways from development. And I think it's

04:32 that overwhelming, powerful emotion that you get from being surrounded by nature that you

04:38 have to be quite humbled by.

04:40 Fabulous. Well, we will have a great time chatting. There'll be so much to talk about.

04:45 We will be talking about your career, your work at West End Gardens. Tom, really lovely

04:50 to speak to you. And we will reconvene then for the Festival of Chichester in the Assembly

04:54 Room Monday, 24th of June at 7.30pm. Tickets from the Festival of Chichester box office.

05:01 to see you, Tom. Thank you. Thanks, Kiril.

05:04 Thank you.

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