Past masters

Mary Keen visits Garden & Wood, the mecca for dedicated gardeners who prefer using tools made in the 1940s

- Photographs by Mark Bolton

LOVERS of old and antique garden tools, prized for their ergonomic design and hard-wearing good looks—not to mention the history they embody—will be familiar with Garden & Wood, which is run by Piers Newth and Louise Allen. They met as horticultural trainees at RHS Wisley in Surrey and ended their gardening careers at the Oxford Botanic Gardens. Kew-trained, she was curator of the gardens, overseeing horticultural and education staff, including a lot of fundraising, and he was in charge of the arboretum.

When Mr Newth found he was spending as much time at his desk as he did outdoors, he remembered ruefully that during lessons at school he always gazed out of the window, because he really hated being inside. Meanwhile, Miss Allen was sacrificing most of her free evenings and weekends searching for possible speakers because courses and lectures were such a good source of income for the garden. It was when they found themselves heading for Ledbury in Herefordshire on Mr Newth’s birthday, to vet yet another possible speaker, that they began to have dreams of leaving. Quite what they would do without regular wages was not clear, but they told one another that ‘something would come up’.

"They return to being tools that will last and be easy to use'