Experience: I look after the world’s oldest pot plant

He was brought to the UK in 1775. He’s a gentle giant who just gets on with life

I came to horticulture after university. I had finished a postgrad in sustainable agriculture and was working in a cafe while living with my parents in Stirling. It was the middle of the last recession and I was finding it hard to get a job. My parents were trying to sell their house and, as I had a bit of time on my hands, they asked me to sort out the garden.

It was a jungle. I cleared all the weeds, and began to plant it – things like lobelia ‘Queen Victoria’ and hollyhock. Then I began a vegetable plot – mangetout, swede, beetroot, purple potatoes – and even revived their tiny greenhouse. I became obsessed. Horticulture combined all sorts of things I found interesting – both ecology and science, but it also had an artistic side; it’s not something that’s talked about in schools.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/9znvhjH