Jul 16

Jul 16 Captain Tom garden to visit

Having spent 42 years tending the gardens at Kew, Harvey Groffman knows a thing or two about plants and planting. He first entered the Brighter Kensington and Chelsea gardening competition on the advice of his mother in 1973, and the following year won first prize. Every year since 1977 Harvey has created a themed garden, celebrating events including the Queen Mother’s 80th birthday, The Queen’s Silver and Golden Jubilees and Kew’s 250th Anniversary. Since 1987, Harvey has opened his garden to the National Garden Scheme, which raises money for a variety of charities. Harvey’s theme this year is Captain Tom, in recognition of the money raised by the pensioner to help with the NHS Covid fight.

The garden has become so well known it has been visited both by the late Queen Mother and Prince Edward. On Monday it will be visited by our Mayor, Councillor Gerard Hargreaves.

With the words ‘Tomorrow is a Good Day’ planted with Echeveria, surrounded by Alternantha for the background foliage, a darker frame is created using seven varieties of Heuchera, with plants from Kernock Plants in Cornwall.

Harvey has lived in his St Quintin Avenue flat since he was six months old and became interested in gardening when neighbours would hand him plants over the garden fence. The garden at that stage had been neglected and although Harvey was only eight years old one neighbour told him: “You need to do something about your garden.” The young Harvey set himself to the job, reading gardening magazines and watching television gardening programmes. At his primary school, Soloman Wolfson in Lancaster Road (since then it was the Terrance Higgins Trust and now the Museum of Brands), he enjoyed the nature study classes, and his passion for gardening was boosted when he won the annual Daffodil competition.

When he moved to secondary school, Christopher Wren, now Phoenix High School in White City, one teacher started a project to create a school garden, and Harvey became one of the main pupils taking part in it. “I think that’s when I decided I wanted to go into gardening,” says Harvey. He had tried office jobs during his school holidays and that life didn’t appeal to him.

Although Harvey’s right arm had been rendered weak by polio when he was a boy in the 1949 polio epidemic, just before the vaccine was made available in 1953, he applied to Kew Gardens where he explained he could have an operation to regain some use of his arm. They agreed he should try, and when the operation was successful Kew gave him a job. He loved working there and stayed gardening there all his working life.

If you would like to visit, the garden opens for the National Garden Scheme on Sunday 1st of August from 2 - 5.30pm, admission £5, homemade teas, at 57 St Quintin Avenue, W10.