Geoff Hamilton
The East End has given birth to more than its share of celebrities. The native sharp wit and eye for an opening has produced actors, playwrights, photographers – and especially comics _– by the score.
Back in the 17th Century, the East End was very different to today and the city was only starting its expansion into the countryside of Essex.
In those days, Stepney, Bow and Poplar really were hamlets or villages, and Whitechapel was famed for its impressive market gardens.
In the 1640s, records show that Leonard Gurle moved his market garden from fast-developing Southwark to an unspoilt 12 acres between what is now Brick Lane and Greatorex Street.
In the 1660s and 70s, his nursery was the largest in London producing fruit trees, jasmine, honeysuckle, shrubs and seeds. So renowned did Gurle become that he was made the King’s Gardener in 1677.
But perhaps the last thing you’d expect the east London of the 1930s to produce would be Britain’s best-loved TV gardener. For Geoff Hamilton, though, the grey landscape of a now-built-up East End was the inspiration to bring colour and joy to his environment.
Stepney-born
Hamilton was born in Stepney on August 15, 1936, barely minutes before his twin brother Tony.
His taste for horticulture started early, with Geoff planting out seedlings in the family garden at the age of four.
And after graduating from Writtle Agricultural College in Essex – side by side with Tony, who studied agriculture – Geoff set up as a freelance landscape gardener.
But working on other people’s patches wasn’t enough for the ambitious Hamilton. So in 1970, he moved his whole family to Kettering in Northamptonshire for a new project – the Garden Centre.
If your idea of a garden centre is peat, pots, gnomes and a few flowers, think again. Hamilton took a rundown building and land and transformed them into a thriving plot where the emphasis was firmly on the plants.
At the same time, he began writing pieces for Garden News magazine, and swiftly moved onto television, presenting Gardening Diary on Anglia TV. Journalism began to compete for his time in the garden and, in 1977, he took over as editor of Practical Gardening magazine.
Geoff now had a new passion – organic gardening.
And, joining the BBC’s Gardener’s World programme in 1979, he soon evangelised about it to the huge audiences who watched the show and became a favourite as he faced the camera, working his Barnsdale Hall estate.
His natural and down-to-earth style made him a hit with the viewers.
Fellow journalist, and editor of Plant magazine, Dirk van der Werff, visited Barnsdale to watch Geoff at work.
He never used a script and, more often than not, he would deliver perfectly first time, not an ‘umm’ or an ‘err’ to be heard.
Unpretentious
And the visitor gained an insight into how the unpretentious East Ender resisted getting carried away by his new-found fame.
“He told us to ‘make sure and use the toilet while you’re here,’” remembers van der Werff, who thought it a strange request.
But Geoff went on to explain his reasons to the baffled journalist.
“That’s where I keep all my letters that say: ‘Geoff Hamilton, you talk a load of rubbish!’ It keeps my feet on the ground,” he said.
And there indeed were the letters from armchair critics, pasted about the toilet wall.
Geoff had moved easily into best-selling books as the eighties and nineties drew on.
A comfortable and successful retirement beckoned, though as Barnsdale was his home, his hobby and his work, he probably had no plans to let up the pace.
Sadly it wasn’t to be, as he died just eight days short of his sixtieth birthday in August 1996.
“He represented the common man,” says van der Werff.
And he represented a
vision shared by all the East Enders who tend their
tiny patches of colour and tranquillity, in gardens and windowboxes, amid the grime and
bustle of London.