Bunny in the Garden with... – Details, episodes & analysis

In the first of these two episodes top football correspondent, Henry Winter talks to Bunny in his Rutland garden about the importance of football to the economics of the country (somewhat larger than horticulture) and how footballers can have a huge influence  on excellent causes such as school dinners, autism and planting trees.

His brother Tim (aka Abdal Hakim Murad), says of Henry "I was always the clever, successful one. Henry just wanted to play football with his mates. I used to tell him, ‘I'm going to make loads of money, and you'll still be playing football with your mates.' Now he’s living in a house with 10 bedrooms and married to a Bond girl."

Henry proudly shows off his topiary yew avenue, modelled on Alice in Wonderland, his Lord’s bench and his garden lock down project. His father, John Winter, was a famous Architect and his mother was a garden designer, who worked with Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe and John Brookes amongst others. Hear how these influences have rubbed off on Henry! 

Henry read English at Edinburgh and in his small class of around ten were two now eminent gardeners - Sarah Raven and Isobel Bannerman. 

As a present, Bunny took Henry a French tarragon plant, great for soothing stomachs – when Henry is (very occasionally) scooped, a tea from this plant is brilliant for turbulent stomachs.

To see Henry in his garden watch Bunny's YouTube video ‘HENRY WINTER in his garden talking about gardening and football. The nations greatest passions!’

In this episode Bunny talks to Bob  Flowerdew in his Norfolk garden. 

They talk about his previous work before he started gardening professionally which include chicken giblet washer (advancing to chicken box counter), council care-home cleaner, dog impersonator, glass fibre laminator, houseboy & cook in house of ill repute, festival security lighting engineer, marine engineer, museum attendant, nude model, Parisian guide, theatrical gofer, vitreous enamel applicator, arcade mechanic & pinball wizard. 

Bob though, is most at home performing.  He approached the producer of BBC Radio 4’s Gardeners’ Question Time some 28 years ago, where he had been in the audience and said he could do a better job, and was subsequently taken on by the producer. On the program, with its 2 million listeners a week, Bob has consistently promoted organic gardening  and had a big influence on the way people garden. 

Hear why he was booed off stage at Glastonbury , why he is not a big fan of hedgehogs in his garden and why he disagrees with George Monbiot about growing pineapples in the UK. He also has boycotted Tesco’s over their ‘Bags for Life’.
For his present Bunny took him a fig, ‘Desert King’ which is extremely cold tolerant with beautiful, large, melt in the mouth fruit. Not widely grown, but in Bunny’s opinion superior to ‘Brown Turkey’.

To see Bob in his garden watch Bunny’s YouTube video ‘Bunny and Bob Flowerdew bicker in Bob’s Norfolk Garden’. 

Bunny chats to Nina Campbell in her London Garden. Nina is the  Doyenne of Interiors and  is an   internationally renown Interior Designer. Nina  won the American Fashion award for ‘the Women who has most influenced style Internationally’ and works for many celebs such as Ringo Star and the royals. Nina is Godmother to Geri Halliwell’s daughter. 
She was born on the day after World War II ended.
Nina talks about her life and how she got into interior design. Nina she still enjoys running her business despite being 79 years old . Her wide business interests include having a  shop and designing fabric collections.  Nina has no intention of having an exit strategy,  but enjoys working with young designers and creating new ranges for a wide range of price points. Nina talks about her design strategies and how she plays with scale and  colour. In her tiny  London garden she has played with paving sizes to create false perspective, has used mirrors and narrow but high containers to  make the space look  bigger but also softer.  The palette of plants, the louvred fencing and the furniture are chosen with great attention to detail and together create stunning relaxing  spaces from what was a narrow, dusty, roadside  strip with no privacy from the public.
For Nina’s present, Bunny takes Nina a plant, Dianthus barbatus ‘Sooty’ , a short lived perennial with beautifully deep maroon flower heads that last for months. It also has an exceptionally long vase life. This plant self seeds (and is true from seed) so although technically a short lived perennial, in affect it rarely  needs replacing. To see Nina’s gardensee Bunny’s YouTube ‘Bunny chats to Nina Campbell in her London Garden’.

#ninacampbell #bunnyguinnesspodcast 

his week Bunny is in the garden with Tim Hart.

Tim switched from a nine year long banking career to starting a hotel in 1979. Now his world famous hotel, Hambleton Hall in Rutland,  is renown  for its superb cuisine – it has held a Michelin star since 1982, for 44 years, the longest of any restaurant in the UK. Tim gained this just 3 years after opening, while AA Gill’s brother, Nick Gill, was head chef. 

The gardens Tim has created, which overlook Rutland Water, are also exceptional. Tim explains how they altered them to give them year round appeal and how he prunes his stunning cloud pruned cork oak, climbing the trees himself in order to do it. 

See the video ‘Fabulous Food, Fabulous Garden’ on Bunny’s YouTube channel where she chats to Tim and the Head Gardener Rob.

www.hambletonhall.com 

#hambletonhall #bunnyguinnesspodcast 

Today Bunny is in the garden with Nick Mason and his wife, Annette Lynton Mason. Nick is a  founder member of Pink Floyd, and his wife, Annette, an actress and sculptress well known for her roles in big hits such as New Avengers, Cross Roads, Casualty, Treasure Hunt and more…

They bought their house in Corsham, Wiltshire from the Parker Bowles, after Camilla and Andrew Parker Bowles divorced in 1995. 

Their garden is open on the 8th and 9th June 2024 for charity. Visitors can admire some of Nick’s car collection as well as their garden complete with pigs, sheep, cattle and sheep. 

Nick talks about life with the Pink Floyd, and his new band Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets, the meteoric rise of Pink Floyd, and what sort of architect he would have been if he had continued his architecture studies. 

Annette explains how she makes sculptures for the garden, and life as an actress.

#bunnyguinnesspodcast #middlewickhouse 

This week Bunny chats to Max Cotton. Max was a political reporter in Westminster for the BBC from 1995. He left politics in 2012. 

Max decided he would live for twelve months from his small holding near Glastonbury of 5 acres only allowing himself to buy salt. As Max put it ‘I wanted a plain pastoral existence, that a chap in Saxon England would recognise, for its stoic simplicity of purpose.’

Bunny chats to Max about the politics involved in farming, William Cobbett who in the 18th Century reckon a quarter of an acre could feed a family, and how he grew 2500 calories a day to feed himself for 365 days. 

#bunnyguinnesspodcast #maxgrowingsolo 

In this weeks episode Bunny talks to Bella Hoare in her magnificent garden next to Stourhead, the world famous 18th Century landscape garden created by Henry Hoare (Henry the Magnificent) . Bella is a direct descendant from Henry, and like him she is a banker and gardener but is also an artist. 

Her exhibition ‘A Different Green’  takes place at The Oxo Tower on London’s South Bank between 22nd May and 2nd June 2024.  

Bella has lived and worked in Russia, opens her garden under the NGS and is passionate about colour. 

See the video featuring the Bella’s garden, and Bunny and Bella, on Bunny’s YouTube Channel.

#bellahoare #bunnyguinnesspodcast 

In this episode Bunny chats to Guy Singh-Watson, who set up Riverford. 

Guy graduated from Oxford with a first class degree in Agriculture and Forestry despite being severely dyslexic, following a brief period working in New York as a management consultant he returned to his Devon roots and started growing veg on a 3 acre plot with a wheel barrow and tractor. He built this into a business with an £11million pound turnover in 2022. 

He is now starting to create a garden adjacent to the sea – Derek Jarmen style but with a few raised beds to grow -you’ve guessed it- veg. 

Guy gives advice about growing veg, and tells Bunny about his extraordinary life.
#riverford #bunnyguinnesspodcast 

This week Bunny chats to Plum Sykes in her garden, in Gloucestershire. 

Christened Victoria but nicknamed Plum, she grew up with parents who had an extravagant lifestyle, mixing in high society circles, but with little money. Graduating from Oxford, Plum went to work for Vogue in the States. 

A successful novelist Plum is about to launch her latest book ‘Wives Like Us’ a satire based on the Chipping Norton set. Even before the release of the book, locals are guessing who exactly the main characters portrayed are based on! The hugely popular character, Shelby Fairfax is a Landscape Architect and Plum explains why she made this choice. 

Plum’s own garden is stylishly simple, and she talks about why it suits her, her favourite plants, whether she is a socialite and how she developed her fashion style on arriving in the Vogue offices.

Today Bunny Guinness is in the gardens of Badminton House, with Her Grace, The Duchess of Beaufort. In this episode Bunny talks to Georgia, Duchess of Beaufort, about the gardens. Hear about the stunning tulip planting Georgia has been in charge of, to give the garden more spring appeal.

Georgia Somerset, Duchess of Beaufort, married Henry Somerset, 12th Duke of Beaufort in 2018. Georgia is the grand daughter of the novelist Anthony Powell, she studied classics at Oxford University, before becoming a columnist and obituarist for The Daily Telegraph. 

Georgia, a keen gardener, is cataloguing the plants in the amazing gardens of Badminton House. There are many as Mary, Duchess of Beaufort, was one of Britain’s earliest distinguished women gardeners. Mary got into horticulture as she was trying to find a plant to ease her melancholy. She then began seriously collecting plants from many countries in the 1690’s, introducing more than 1500 plants, including Pelargonium zonale. Mary Somerset commissioned Everad Kickius to illustrate her choice exotics, and these are in her two volume florilegium which is still in the library at Badminton. Georgia is arranging for high quality prints to be made of a selection of these, so that they can be more widely appreciated. 
These fine gardens have been enhanced by a range of designers, including Charles Bridgeman, Capability Brown, Russell Page, and François Goffinet. Georgia’s husband’s mother, Caroline, was a keen and knowledgeable gardener, as is his step mother, Miranda, both who have put their stamp on the stunning gardens. 

In addition, the Badminton Estate are now working with the Royal Horticultural Society to create a new flower show in the historic grounds of the house in 2026, alternating with RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival which will become a biennial event in two years. 

To see what the garden looks like, Bunny Guinness’s YouTube ‘How the new Duchess of Beaufort is shining a light on the gardens of Badminton House.’ Is up now… 

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