Gill Ford – Garden Designer
I was born on Sunday 23rd January 1949 at midday, so I can happily claim to be a ‘Sunday’s child full of grace’! My parents met at a dance at the Brighton Ballroom and once married, they lived with my grandfather, in Macclesfield where my mother had grown up. My father, Norman Brooks ran JW Brooks & Son with his 2 brothers, as a silk manufacturing business, in Macclesfield. Theirs was the first UK mill to swap to terylene for the production of ties.
We lived upstairs in a wonderful house, while one of my uncles and his family lived on the ground floor. My uncle’s wife was a lovely Indian lady who stored a large suitcase in the cellar, full of saris and amazing jewels. I spent many a happy hour dressing up and grew to appreciate how wonderful colour is. My dad loved gardening and gave me my own patch to tend, where I grew vegetables and flowers. At the tender age of 3 I can remember using his garden roller as an easel for painting and drawing.
My brother is 6 years older than me so as children we rarely played together. However Olga, our bloodhound dog and I would play for hours and take walks in the local park. I adopted the duty of feeding her and took a liking to her tins of PAL, much to my mum’s chagrin! We would spend time walking in the Pennines when I was young and I would ‘lay a trail’ of 4-5 miles on my own. Dad would then give Olga a sweater of mine for the scent to find me! She never failed, thank goodness. At 11 I promised that I would go to the Andes and the Galapagos.
My dad taught me to sail on a National 12 dinghy and we’d sail on a lake nearby in Cheshire. He took us to Llanbedrog, in Wales for 6 weeks each summer. Other family friends would holiday in the next bay, in Abersoch. Between us we had a variety of boats – Nationals, Fireflies and Catamarans as well as ski boats. As a capable sailor by the age of 12, I was allowed to sail solo from Llanbedrog around the peninsular to Abersoch. We could sail all day with minimum supervision and the only proviso was to be back by 6pm when the wind dropped. I only missed the deadline twice, when my dad sent out a rescue boat, which I refused to use and paddled my own way back – perhaps I was a little stubborn!
One magical moment was when I was sailing happily until a pod of porpoises swam under the keel and lifted the dinghy right up out of the water and swam along, carrying me on their backs. It was pretty scary but wonderful.
I attended Mount Carmel, a Catholic school run by strict Carmelite nuns, until I was 11. Then I went to the local High School in Macclesfield, and afterwards took my 3 A levels at Cheadle Hulme School, which was great fun. My father wouldn’t permit me to do art but the Art teacher allowed me to use the art studio to play with paints and pencils, which spiked my interest and improved my skills.
My aunt died while I was studying for my A levels and kindly left me her red Triumph Herald convertible, which I drove to school and I suddenly became very popular!
My passions and interests by this age had developed to gardening, sailing, painting flowers, tennis and cycling. I wasn’t super bright but achieved moderate grades in school at most subjects. When the headmaster asked my dad (not me), what subjects I should study at A Level, he replied “It doesn’t really matter as long as it includes cooking!” I chose Biology, Geography and English! When he left school my brother went to Oxford but my dad persisted in his choice of cookery for me, and I went to Napier College, in Edinburgh to study Hotel Management and Catering.
I loved Edinburgh but the course was very boring so I returned to my parent’s house, now in Prestbury and worked as a gardener for a while. I then went to work for Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) In Alderly Edge, as a research assistant. The laboratories were carrying out experiments with Armillaria mellea while I worked there, commonly known as honey fungus, and subsequently ICI produced the first Penicillin, quite an accolade.
At that time my mother was seriously ill and my parents were considering emigrating to Spain so I was forced to plan my future alone. I loved the retail trade and secured a job with Jaeger, moving south to London and did a 2 year Management Training course and so began my career in retail.
I loved living in London and met my first husband, Mike, when I was 23 and we married very quickly in September 1972, as my parents were about to move to Spain, 10 days after we married! My husband had a job as a Diamond Buyer for De Beers, (yes! I do have a diamond!) based in Sierra Leone in West Africa, so bang went my career as we had to move to Africa. However I wasn’t deterred and did correspondence courses in Garden Design, which was testing but paved my way into a career in Garden Design.
At that time the Manager in the Sierra Leone office, rescued 2 chimpanzees that were orphans. His wife and I had the most amazing time taking the older one ‘Chop Chop’, by jeep into the jungle to exercise swinging from the lianas. After 2 years Chop Chop was sent to UK to be the key star in the PG Tips advert.
Over 4 years Mike and I spent our time in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Antwerp. He worked constantly and I occupied myself taking courses. During the years in Africa I grew tomatoes from seed, coped with beef that had walked from Mali, which had to be wrapped in pawpaw leaves for 6 weeks before they were edible, otherwise the meat was very tough, (they had no supermarkets there). I also coped with a whole, newly killed warm pig and live chickens – it was a steep learning curve for me. When I became pregnant we returned to the UK, to live in SW London. It was wonderful to be back home.
We had 2 lovely sons and after they went to school I opened a children’s clothes shop called ‘Jack in the Box’ in East Sheen which I loved and it was very successful. However at that time Mike was travelling with his work and away all the time and sadly we divorced. I had to give up the shop and I found another job, working for local Government in Human Resources and gained my Certificate in Human Resources in 1999 when the boys had gone to university. At the age of 50 I graduated at last, in HR (CIPD). My sons said that most people qualify at 21 – better late than never!
I managed to buy a house, moving from our flat, and started work on the garden straight away. In 2000 I opened the garden as part of the National Garden Scheme, even though it was only 30 feet x 40 feet in size, which was very exciting. This led to opportunities for me to be creative in other people’s gardens, after work, so life became very busy.
The following years gave opportunities to travel and realise some childhood dreams. It began in 2000 when 12 of us set out to do the 5 day Inca trail, after training for 6 months. We walked along the well-worn, narrow paths with very steep drops down into the jungle. I was at last walking through my beloved Andes and it was far better than I’d imagined. We also went to Cusco, Quito, Lake Titicaca and ended up in Bolivia. I left the others there and flew to Ecuador and on to my next ‘must visit’ – The Galapagos Islands, which were beyond my wildest dreams. The sky and trees were full of birds, the ground full of wildlife and the sea a gorgeous Cerulean blue – total magic! When I visited 10 years later with Mike my 2nd husband, at least 50% of the natural birds, fish and animals had vanished because of the increase in human beings and rats.
In 2000 I met my second husband Mike and I was headhunted by Price Waterhouse Cooper (PWC) to work for Local Government departments in London, reducing the staff by 20%. This was very lucrative, but I was not very popular with the staff as you can imagine!
Later in 2001 Mike and I visited Chile, travelling the full length of the country, ending up on Easter Island which was totally enchanting. We realised our aim to walk 60 miles around the whole island, sleeping in tents, to raise money for Marie Curie. While there we stayed in Apu Vanappu in a little hotel run by Mahina Taca Taca Georgia. There were SO many Moai, (monolithic human figures carved by the Rapa Nui people), to represent deceased people which were fascinating. Their eyes were made with black obsidian.
In 2003 Mike and I got married and moved to Church Cottage, a most wonderful 500 year old cottage in Hever, Kent. I continued to work in London and created lots of gardens for clients and a 4 acre garden for us which we opened to the public annually and remains, in my opinion, one of my best gardens that I have ever created. While living there I answered an advert in a Garden Designers magazine asking for volunteers to work in the schools in Kylesha Townships in Cape Town to provide children with space to play and to design a new garden in the Kirstenbosch Gardens and learn how the locals created their gardens. It was an amazing experience! I went with 6 other gardeners. It was dangerous due to the political situation and we had to be protected by armed guards all the time we were there.
After living in London, Hever was far too quiet and so in 2013 I retired and we moved to Cranleigh where I joined the Cranleigh in Bloom team, gaining the nickname of Mrs Bloom in which I rejoiced! We won Britain in Bloom, Silver award in the first year and then Andy and her team won the coveted Gold Medal in 2016.
I really enjoy sharing my knowledge of gardening and soon after we arrived in Cranleigh I started writing a monthly article about gardening for Cranleigh Magazine. I then took over running the U3A Garden Group with a great team and soon we had just under 100 members, meeting monthly in the Arts Centre and outings to local gardens. We invited many well-known speakers such as Andy McIndoe, and Neil Miller from Hever Castle, to speak. We also had some Open Gardens in Cranleigh which were a great success – so I continued to be called Mrs Bloom!! After 7 years I decided to hand the running of it over to Gill Wilcox last September.
In May 2019, 2 friends and I walked the Camino from Sarria to Santiago de Compostella, 72.9 miles over 6 days and we were blessed with glorious weather every day. This time we were raising money for Phyllis Tuckwell because Mike had been diagnosed with cancer by then.
Walking along the Camino with Diana and Liz (who had also done the Walking Marathon with me) was very special. We had lovely weather each day and we walked through peaceful countryside, accompanied with the gentle tap, tap, tapping of our walking poles and we always greeted fellow pilgrims with ‘Buen Camino’.
One of my best moments was when I was with one of my grandsons, Orion, coming back from Cranleigh village. He was scooting along chanting ‘Flowers and leaves, leaves and flowers. I love flowers and leaves’. ‘Yes’, I said. ‘I’ve done it!’
I’ve loved my careers in HR and Garden Design and now relish the opportunity retirement affords to paint and draw. I experiment with colour and have at last started to use bright colours with my favourite being Cerulean blue. I mostly paint flowers, animals and sea views. Many of the pictures remind me of the wonderful travels that Mike and I went on – from top-to-toe of Chile, the magical Easter Island, 3 trips to India, an exploration of Java and Bali and the final one to the Amazon and Ecuador and a wonderful return to the Galapagos – one of my favourite paintings is of the Blue Footed Booby!
I feel lucky to have 2 gorgeous sons and 5 lovely grandchildren. I also have a wealth of very special friends in Cranleigh and London.
As you can tell from this story I like to be busy and now I look forward to guiding my sons and grandchildren through their lives for a good few years yet!
