In Conversation With: Arthur Parkinson

This October at Thyme, we welcome gardener, podcast host, environmental campaigner and French and Saunders enthusiast; Arthur Parkinson.

This autumn see’s Arthur’s fourth book published ‘Planting a Paradise’. It  follows on from his best seller,  ‘The Flower Yard’  in 2021, with a returning focus to pollinators and container gardening. 

Arthur will be joined by Garden Designer, Butter Wakefield, where they will talk about what to grow through the seasons with an array of planting ideas and recommended varieties to inspire the experienced and novice gardener alike.  Together, Butter and Arthur will share their top tips on how to create a beautiful garden, no matter how small or large, and also an oasis for wildlife. 

Having trained at the iconic Kew Gardens, what is the most valuable skill you learnt that translates into your everyday life and career? 

I wanted to be a zoo keeper actually. I’ve known this part of country (Cotswolds) oddly before I lived here for a few years because I went for an internship at Cotswold Wildlife park when I was 18 I think.  I wanted to look after flamingos and penguins so my aunt Ros drove me from Nottingham for the interview! Then a few weeks afterwards, I was offered the years training at Kew Gardens, this was paid so I accepted this. Somewhat alas, I’d like to have enough money one day to perhaps have flamingos, so if I win the lottery that’s what the money would be spent on, a beautiful wetland aviary filled with flamingos!

The time at Kew taught me I wasn’t a professional gardener, I don’t like tightly formal gardens and the training actually knocked my confidence. You had to work a full time job as student gardener, then study in your own time. I wasn’t interested in learning all the latin and I hated the leaf blowing! I loved being able to go into the palm house early in the morning, absolutely incredible - it was a great education in propagation.

I love sowing seeds and taking cuttings and it was a time of forming good horticultural  habits and knowledge in this, how to be organised and know what happens when. I do think the profession of a trained gardener should be one that is respected and commands a worthy wage, it’s a very skilled job that requires great dedication and physical commitment.

I was known at Kew for being able to catch peacocks successfully, but I don’t shout about being Kew trained because you are then asked about a plant that you have no idea about or worse, have no interest in and look a complete idiot.

You share with Thyme a love of wildflower meadows, any top tips for establishing one in a garden lawn ? 

Scrape up the turf or at least really scarify it with a rake so you are left with a good area of roughed up grass and earth so the seeds you scatter have a fighting chance at germinating. The most important thing is to sow fresh and arguably local wildflower seed so ask around as organic farmers and those with established meadows are often happy to supply seed. If you are buying packets from the garden centre, put these in the freezer draw for fortnight and then sow them, this cold will help wake the seeds up! Make sure you are sowing perennial wildflower seed mixes as these come back each year but you may not get any flowers in their first year whilst they establish. Sow seeds or plant bought in plug plants in the early autumn,  they’ll like the usually damp conditions of autumn helping them to establish and then the winter cold will ensure the seed germinates in the spring. The seed of the parasitic yellow rattle is also essential as it curbs the vigour of grass and there are plenty of bulbs that can be planted into an area of garden meadow too - but Butter has a meadow in her garden so I hope we can chat more with her hands on experience of getting it established. 

Thyme is also known for being a hub for songbirds. What tips do you have for a bird attractive garden?

Hedges, they give little birds huge protection from predators and the weather and give them opportunities to nest too. The fast growing hawthorn is brilliant and in the spring comes into leaf in the richest lime green. Also great is pyracantha, it comes in various forms but the orange berried one seems to be the best. It’s thorny so a great choice for gardens plagued by cats and magpies, if clipped it will grow densely into a small hedge or can be trained against a wall, the berries are eaten over the autumn. I think natural bird feeding is great and better than bird feeders over the summer at least. Letting flowers go to seed is a good thing, goldfinches love lavender seeds and of course teasels and sunflower heads. If you can attract blue tits then they’ll eat the aphids on roses and the whole garden will benefit from songbirds naturally predating insects. Bird baths are wonderful, a large frost proof terracotta sauce makes for a great one placed on a gardens table, keep it clean and refresh it daily. Keep bird feeders really clean, soak them  weekly in a household disinfectant to ensure your bird diners remain healthy and aren’t bothered by harmful pathogens that dirty feeders can harbour. 

You are renowned for your authenticity on social media, how do you navigate the ever-changing online landscape? 

I have an incredibly engaged following of real people, it’s a powerful thing and I don’t take it for granted. I can’t just put up endless meaningless pretty bollocks, as I have a lot of passion for the things I love. Beauty that we get from gardens, organic, good farming and stewardship of the environment for the whole of my lifetime, it feels and it’s proven actually, that governments past and present don’t give a fig about things that are the foundation of a healthy planet and us being healthy.

I also prefer my personal life to not really be on social media, you need to be careful of painting perfect pictures, I don’t believe is fair or mentally healthy, so you learn what to say yes or no to. This is all a comfortable cyber campaigning though, I’m not campaigning on the ground.   I’m aghast everyday because I Google news things like extinction, farming and cruelty to find out what’s really happening and then you turn the telly or radio on and you want to scream at the headlines, we are fed absolute rubbish by mainstream media. 

I try and share positives too, it might be about the successful hatching of a flamingo egg or a wildflower meadow a community has planted, there a lot of amazing small organisations doing amazing things. What saves the gloomy news sharing probably is my love for comedy, so lots of French and Saunders and the clips I find of things that make me laugh.  I think you have to have confidence to navigate social media and I think because I haven’t sugar coated myself that’s a good thing. I think people expect the unexpected with what I post to an extent!

What are your favourite garden flowers that you love to cut for the vase?

I love sweet peas and sow these every year usually on Boxing Day. With lots of manure and watering they flower well and the scent of them is so wonderful, I am always tempted by new varieties and grow them but always the traditional ‘Matucana’ reigns supreme in terms of perfume and elegance.

Sticking with perfume I love honeysuckles, they look incredible picked as single stems, they have amazing shapes, along with this climber, I love passion flowers too. Big parrot tulips are a treat like big orange balloons in the case of ‘Parrot King’ and ‘Avignon Parrot’ are incredible picked, you only need 3 or 5 in nice single vases and you have such a riot of colour, vermilion Orange is a very positive colour I think.

At the time of writing, I have a vase of crocosmia and they look so oriental and animated, just them in a good vase, have lasted almost a week now too. I’m loving hardy perennials such as these more and more and lots of herbs. I think a lot of herbs are incredible especially for pots they cover a lot of tick boxes, low maintenance, scented, edible and when they flower they are great for pollinators too.

What are you looking forward to talking with Butter about?

I have admired Butter’s confidence,  she’s a real garden designer, so I’d love to learn how she has the confidence to do what she does when people seem to expect instant results so often with gardens now. She has a fairly little garden like me, so I think together we’ll be sharing plenty of planting ideas and thoughts on success.

Where do you go for inspiration?

I like visiting wildflower meadows more than ever before, because of the mental freedom they give, a lot of gardens I find mentally restraining. There is a lot of freedom to be found in nature that we can apply to our gardening habits. I love allotment plots for the similar reason, they are more gritty and freer than a lot of gardens are there is also the plus that I’ll usually find chickens ! I’m becoming more and more allergic to completely mown lawns, people don’t like the comment but I really don’t see the point in them at all, mow paths and create lovely mown areas for the garden table or have thyme and camomile lawns but have the rest as a meadow filled with bulbs, we are a nation addicted to garden machines,  you only have to sit in an urban or village garden on a lovely day and you’ll hear mowers abound, I think people should keep sheep if they want a big short lawn!