THE CURIOUS GARDENER

This month we talk to Huw Richards, rising star of the horticultural scene and prolific vlogger on organic veg growing and permaculture with a YouTube following of thousands

- Huw Richards

Hi Huw - we've been waiting to chat to you ever since watching your great videos on YouTube and receiving a copy of your book, The Vegetable Grower's Handbook. We'd love to know what got you into gardening.

Do you guys remember The Good Life on TV? That inspired my parents quite a lot – it got my parents into the dream – along with John Seymour’s book on self-sufficiency. Before they moved to where they are now, they had a terraced house with a front lawn which they ripped out and completely remade into a garden. Years later when they moved, the new owners put it back to lawn. Then one day they were redoing the kitchen and discovered that a photograph of how my parents had the garden had fallen behind a cupboard and they were so amazed by how nice the garden looked; they put it back again to how it was when my parents had it.

My parents wanted a smallholding and always wanted to have a family in Wales. My grandad is Welsh and there is a picture of me when I was two or three in a red onesie just looking at a raised bed and I had no idea how significant that would become.

I was so inspired by how you could plant a small seed and it would grow into something you could eat. I thought it was utter magic and was hooked.

In summer I couldn't wait for school to finish so I could go back and spend an evening in the garden with my dad.

You have an enormous amount of info on growing veg on your YouTube channel, but you are always experimenting - always challenging conventional wisdom and trying something new.