TV's Percy was perfect pick to open this pioneering venture

>> CHURCHDOWN was the setting for much excitement this month in 1967 when Percy Thrower arrived in the village. Horticulturalists of a certain vintage will recall Percy as the first TV celebrity gardener.

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Pipe clenched between his teeth and wearing tweed jacket with collar and tie in all seasons, Percy hosted the BBC's Gardening Club programme from the first episode screened in 1956.

Gardening on TV in those distant, 405 line, black and white days presented a challenge. Shrubs and blooms in monochrome all looked pretty much the same.

So unlike Monty Don today, who regales the Gardeners' World audience with poetic waxings about the delicate shade of his camellias, Percy had to adopt a different tack.

Gardening in the 1950s was more concerned with killing things than growing. What a gardener aspired to was controlling nature with an iron fist. And so it was that Percy would appear on the box, show viewers the damage greenfly had done to his standard chrysanthemums, then explain with great delight how he was plotting revenge with the latest pesticide.