The ground crew

To get up at first light and work in all weathers are the basic requirements of a head gardener, without whose extensive knowledge none of our great gardens would survive. Christopher Stocks meets the unsung heroes and heroines of horticulture

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ON his first day as head gardener to the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth, Derbyshire, in 1826, Joseph Paxton arrived at 4.30am, climbed over the garden wall and explored his new domain in the dark. At 6am, he was ready to give the gardeners their first orders, and by 9am he was having breakfast with the Duke’s housekeeper and her niece, Sarah, who was soon to become his wife. Paxton was, admittedly, extraordinarily talented and energetic by any standards, but it gives you some idea of the kind of stamina and enterprise a head gardener needs—not to mention the ability to get up at the crack of dawn.

Head gardeners are the unsung heroes of our horticultural history, for few of them have ever attained the eminence of Paxton or Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown, who, long before he became a legendary landscape architect, spent a decade as head gardener at Stowe in Buckinghamshire. Most head gardeners, then and now, have simply got on with the job of maintaining and beautifying our greatest gardens, public and private, and (rather like our farmers) have usually received little recognition for the physically demanding work they do, in all weathers and at all times of the year. They are also remarkable repositories of practical knowledge, both learned on the job and inherited from the generations of other head gardeners who have gone before them.