An ancient mulberry tree reignited my love of plants

Alison Jenkins, horticulturalist at Damson Farm, Somerset

- SARA EMSLIE

A serendipitous house rental in London many years ago re-sparked a love of plants that would eventually lead to a career change into garden design and horticultural sustainability for Alison Jenkins. Her first career was in the art world, but she now runs successful workshops from her smallholding in the tranquil Somerset countryside, near Bath.

I loved London in my twenties and early thirties and as I'd grown up in a small market town in Shropshire it felt really exciting to be somewhere where there was a lot going on, Alison explains. She studied for an MA in Art History at Goldsmiths College while working in galleries, organising exhibitions of contemporary art. But by the time she was 35, her interest had started to wane. I spent my childhood in Shropshire, climbing trees, cycling through country lanes, and nibbling raw runner beans crisp from the vegetable patch. Living in London, I began feeling the need to be closer to open countryside again.

The reality of being an exhibition organiser is that you spend a lot of time in an office in front of a screen managing all the logistics and that was less appealing!'

But it was the property she was living in that provided the impetus. I had moved into a shared house in Camberwell that had an old conservatory with an established grapevine and an ancient mulberry tree in the garden. It reignited a love of plants I'd experienced as a teenager, so I signed up for a part-time RHS training course at the local college.' A further course in garden design with the English Gardening School at the Chelsea Physic Garden followed, with Alison also taking charge of a nearby allotment and setting up a London-based design practice. But eventually, the lure of open fields and a rural life proved irresistible, and she made the move from city to country.