Green Queen - Carol Bucknell

YH&G gardens editor Carol Bucknell has been with us since 1994, when ruched blinds, bullnose benchtops and coloured windows were all the rage. We asked her how she became a gardening guru and how Kiwi gardens have changed

- Sally Conor

How did your career begin?

I started my career in London, working on a wonderful weekly architectural magazine called The Architect’s Journal. I started as a secretary to the editor and worked my way into an editorial job. I loved it all: the subject, the quirky, interesting people I worked with, the lovely Georgian buildings in St James’s Park where our offices were.

I became assistant features editor and my boss, a lovely man called Dan Cruickshank, was an expert on architectural history and would walk around London detailing the history and merits of each building we passed. I learned a lot about architecture and he helped me develop my writing skills.

Did you know you wanted to be a writer? What was your inspiration?

I knew when I left school that I wanted to be a journalist; my sixth-form English teacher had suggested it and that thought stayed in my head. But first I did a BA in English, then travelled for a few years. I eventually moved to London for eight years, where I started looking for jobs in that field. It wasn’t easy as I wasn’t trained, but I was later told by a journalism tutor that working on a weekly publication in London was the best training I could’ve had.

Where did your work life take you before you arrived at YH&G?

After Architect’s Journal I worked on a travel mag, then returned to Auckland where I was offered the editorship of Architecture NZ, which was about to launch. That was a dream job for me. However, after my daughter was born, I needed more flexibility so I left to become a freelance writer. I wrote initially about houses and architecture, then gardens for various publications including The New Zealand Herald,