Meet the gardening firefighter who's up for top award

A SELF confessed 'garden geek' Nuneaton firefighter has more than one million followers and is now in the running for a top award.

- By CLAIRE HARRISON News Reporter

Jonny Hincks is a proud Nuneaton firefighter but away from the 'day job' at the Newtown Road-based station he has another passion - gardening.

It has been something he has loved since he was a child and just before the pandemic, he decided to post a picture about his new shed on Instagram.

"It all started by accident, just before Covid I put a new shed up in my garden and I was fed-up of trying to show someone a photo and them having to scroll through to find it, so I thought 'you know what I am going to make a gardening account'," he said.

"I am an absolute geek for gardening, I absolutely love gardening. So I made it (the account) and the first post was me posing with my shed. Then I just started posting regularly, just pictures to start with and then Covid hit and I started to post more things and started making videos.

"Then I started posting more silly videos, showing my personality as well as the garden and it just exploded. I didn't mean it, I didn't think 'Oh I want to be a content creator', it happened purely by accident and it has just blown up since then."

His tongue-in-cheek videos have become so popular that he has 1.3 million followers on Instagram, almost a million followers on Facebook and 650,000 followers on TikTok.