Green Fingers And A Business Head
Country Life UK|August 26, 2020
The new RHS president on his own garden and what he will bring to the role
Tiffany Daneff
Green Fingers And A Business Head

It's a broiling day in mid-August when even the ducks on the pond look hot. Keith Weed, the newly appointed president of the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), is out in the garden that surrounds his 15thcentury timber-frame farmhouse in Surrey. ‘You’ll find him in the border,’ says his wife, Kate, an artist, who is accompanied by two border terriers, Biscuit and Bear, named—Mr Weed tells me later—by their children, two sons and a daughter, all of whom are now grown up.

Sure enough, we discover the president crouched inside the suitably impressive herbaceous border between the cosmos and the crocosmia, obligingly clutching a vast bunch of freshly picked flowers for the COUNTRY LIFE photographer.

He certainly has the right garden for the job and, photograph taken, is touchingly enthusiastic to show off its various parts: the abstract topiary garden, the walled garden with espaliered fruits that he has trained himself, the raised vegetable beds with curled kale and onions and a large herb bed with lovage— ‘people never guess what the leaves are when I put them in a salad’—not to mention the two beds that Kate has filched in order to grow dahlias. (She has 250 tubers, he reports.)

They are both keen growers, but they also employ a gardener— ‘essential when I was working full time’. In the greenhouse, the beefsteak and cherry tomatoes are ripe for the picking. The grapes hanging from the vines above Mr Weed’s head, usually harvested for wine, are suffering a bad bout of mildew after the heat. ‘I was going to cut them all off before you came!’ he jokes.

Esta historia es de la edición August 26, 2020 de Country Life UK.

Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.

Esta historia es de la edición August 26, 2020 de Country Life UK.

Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.

MÁS HISTORIAS DE COUNTRY LIFE UKVer todo
Give it some stick
Country Life UK

Give it some stick

Galloping through the imagination, competitive hobby-horsing is a gymnastic sport on the rise in Britain, discovers Sybilla Hart

time-read
3 minutos  |
December 25, 2024
Paper escapes
Country Life UK

Paper escapes

Steven King selects his best travel books of 2024

time-read
3 minutos  |
December 25, 2024
For love, not money
Country Life UK

For love, not money

This year may have marked the end of brag-art’, bought merely to show off one’s wealth. It’s time for a return to looking for connoisseurship, beauty and taste

time-read
4 minutos  |
December 25, 2024
Mary I: more bruised than bloody
Country Life UK

Mary I: more bruised than bloody

Cast as a sanguinary tyrant, our first Queen Regnant may not deserve her brutal reputation, believes Geoffrey Munn

time-read
2 minutos  |
December 25, 2024
A love supreme
Country Life UK

A love supreme

Art brought together 19th-century Norwich couple Joseph and Emily Stannard, who shared a passion for painting, but their destiny would be dramatically different

time-read
5 minutos  |
December 25, 2024
Private views
Country Life UK

Private views

One of the best ways-often the only way-to visit the finest privately owned gardens in the country is by joining an exclusive tour. Non Morris does exactly that

time-read
4 minutos  |
December 25, 2024
Shhhhhh...
Country Life UK

Shhhhhh...

THERE is great delight to be had poring over the front pages of COUNTRY LIFE each week, dreaming of what life would be like in a Scottish castle (so reasonably priced, but do bear in mind the midges) or a townhouse in London’s Eaton Square (worth a king’s ransom, but, oh dear, the traffic) or perhaps that cottage in the Cotswolds (if you don’t mind standing next to Hollywood A-listers in the queue at Daylesford). The estate agent’s particulars will give you details of acreage, proximity to schools and railway stations, but never—no, never—an indication of noise levels.

time-read
2 minutos  |
December 25, 2024
Mission impossible
Country Life UK

Mission impossible

Rubble and ruin were all that remained of the early-19th-century Villa Frere and its gardens, planted by the English diplomat John Hookham Frere, until a group of dedicated volunteers came to its rescue. Josephine Tyndale-Biscoe tells the story

time-read
4 minutos  |
December 25, 2024
When a perfect storm hits
Country Life UK

When a perfect storm hits

Weather, wars, elections and financial uncertainty all conspired against high-end house sales this year, but there were still some spectacular deals

time-read
6 minutos  |
December 25, 2024
Give the dog a bone
Country Life UK

Give the dog a bone

Man's best friend still needs to eat like its Lupus forebears, believes Jonathan Self, when it's not guarding food, greeting us or destroying our upholstery, of course

time-read
4 minutos  |
December 25, 2024