West Midlands: John Massey's garden oasis

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Watch as John Massey talks about the “dream team” who help him maintain his glorious West Midlands garden, which is open to the public every Saturday between February and December.

Transcript

00:00My name is John Massey, I've been a nurseryman for oh gosh 57 years and throughout the last 27

00:20years they put me out to grass and we started this garden down behind the nursery with the most

00:29fantastic team we've always had wonderful people to help a lot of people think it's all my work it's

00:36certainly not and the head gardener now is Nigel Hopes and we've got a fantastic team with Chris,

00:44Caroline and Alex I'm very proud I call them the dream team. There are two areas in the garden which

00:52we change twice a year and this we call the ruin garden and so we change it when the frosts are

01:01finished we do it with all the tender plants because we don't cover anything in the garden during winter

01:08because I love the structure of all the trees and shrubs and although I've had no normal

01:15horticultural education I feel as though I've had the best private education on horticulture in the

01:24world and it was the late Princess Sturtzer who actually taught me how to garden she taught me

01:32how to plant how to garden her one of her main things is transparency pruning that you try and

01:39turn every tree and shrub conifer in the garden into a sculpture in its own right but this is pure fantasy

01:49and because I have a reputation for being difficult and I've got such a good team I won't let them do the

01:56same thing each year so last year this was uh uh salvias cannas and and dahlias and this time is a wonderful

02:05selection of succulents and uh uh the aeonums and they even got a banana plant up there it'll keep on

02:13growing throughout the season uh and I feel if we want people to keep coming and visiting the garden

02:20we need to do it slightly different every year

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