Share your story
We love hearing about how your gardens and our Thrive advice have helped support your wellbeing. If you would like to share your story, email info@thrive.org.uk
With a career running a landscape gardening business, Barry has always had a passion for the land and outdoors. He shares his story including his own garden transformation.
Tell us about your garden space
I’ve got an acre of ground that I’ve had since 1983. My daughter was really into horses, so we bought it with plan to build a stables, which we did.
As she grew up we no longer needed the land for horses, so we did a big project to develop the garden space. I’m a landscape gardener by profession anyway.
We’ve developed it now into a different series of gardens and hedged off so you can walk around from one area to another. We have ponds and water features within it, I’ve always loved water. There are places to sit and summer houses along the way.
I think people locally think of me as the ‘mad gardener’! But we list our garden in the National Garden Scheme (NGS) so people can come and view it.
We have lots of wildlife too. We had a camera up for a bit and you wouldn’t believe what came in. We’ve now got a hedgehog friendly and bird friendly award. That was quite an experience seeing what we captured on film.
Various awards for a wildlife friendly garden including Hedgehog Highway
What brought you into a career in landscape gardening?
I was always into farming, growing up in an area of the country with lots of farms around. But then, I was offered a job in landscaping. It was working outside still, which attracted me.
I built my own business over a long period of time and employed three people.
I’ve always had this desire to want to do things in the garden! It’s in the blood – it’s hard to explain.
Barry
I’ve always had this desire to want to do things in the garden! It’s in the blood – it’s hard to explain.
It’s nice that it’s now passing down to the family. My daughter’s mad keen, she’s taken on an allotment near where she lives and works on it with my grandson. It’s quite good there’s that keen interest!
It’s like fishing, once you’re hooked and you’ve done something, it stays with you.
Paving stones and plants in Barry's garden
What do you most enjoy doing in the garden?
I love growing stuff. We’re members of Plant Heritage, we’re the North-West group. We raise money to try and rescue endangered plants that people have lost interest in.
We grow a lot to raise money for that when we have a couple of shows a year. We also used to list our garden for the NHS.
It’s like anything, if you’ve got an interest and you like doing it, then follow it!
Some people think it’s like housework, you do it one week and you’ve got to do it again the next. But that’s the fun of it, I think! You’re learning all the time.
How has gardening supported your health and wellbeing?
I’ve had a couple of episodes of serious mental illness, but once I got going again – which luckily, I did – the garden was my saviour. You can disappear in it and forget everything that’s troubled you.
If you get involved with gardening and mix with people, it can definitely help – it definitely helped me and I’m grateful for it.
The garden’s like a crutch to help you get over things, you just want to get up and out there! You feel you’ve achieved something even if it’s pulling a few weeds out.
The garden’s like a crutch to help you get over things, you just want to get up and out there!
Barry
It helped me get stronger again, let’s put it that way.
From your experience, do men talk much about gardening? And what do you think would encourage them to do more / talk about it more?
We find more women are join to the garden club we’re members of than the men, sometimes there’s only 3 men vs 30 women.
I think in allotments, men are a bit better at coming together and coming to people to help. With my children, they’ve had lots of help and advice from other men at the allotments.
The connection between men and growing veg might go back in time to when people didn’t really have a garden but had a space to grow veg to eat.
A ladder displaying potted plants in Barry's garden
Do you have any gardening tips, or things you’ve discovered that make your life easier that you could share?
If you’ve growing using ‘no dig’ you’ll get off to a flying start if you grow using raised beds. Up north the ground can be quite wet, so raising beds helps with drainage. I see people in allotments planting straight in the ground and where it’s been so wet, stuff is rotting away.
I cardboard everything in the winter to keep the weeds down. By the time the spring comes the cardboard is dropping to bits, which is what you want. Then I go over it with manure, I’m not actually doing any weeding.
Foxgloves in Barry's garden
It’s always a good idea to listen to the advice of other gardeners! People have tried things and failed, so it’s worth at least trying what they say. It could be fun and less back breaking!
Go with nature, don’t try and upset the balance. If you can build up the bugs in the garden they’ll keep the pests down. Bring the birds in, like the blue tits that are after bugs. Sit and watch them and you’ll see them going under every leaf.
I Google things all the time and try new things. You’ve got to adapt. I’m experimenting using soap powder and salt mixture to kill weeds at the moment, we’ll see how that goes!
And finally, how did you come across Thrive?
It was actually via your Men’s Health survey - I often look for ways I can share my views, whether with the NHS or otherwise – and this caught my interest.
An area of Barry's garden with metal sculptures
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