‘I planned my dream garden while being held captive by guerrilla fighters'

Telegraph

06-04-2025

It's been 25 years since Tom Hart Dyke was released from captivity after being kidnapped by guerrilla fighters during a plant hunting expedition on the Columbia-Panama border.
Travelling on to the Darién Gap in South America, he and a fellow traveller, Paul Winder, were taken hostage while looking for a rare orchid.
The pair had been held for two months when, on June 16 2000, one of the fighters walked into the hut with an AK-47 and said, 'you've got five hours before we blow your heads off'.
It was during this ordeal that Tom dreamt up the idea for the World Garden at Lullingstone Castle, the Kent estate he would soon inherit.
Tom got busy. But not, he explains, 'thinking about the next five hours with dread,' but 'scribbling out what turned into the World Garden' in his diary, a garden laid out as a map of the world, planted with species from all over it. 'Talk about gardening being therapeutic.' He says it was his way of dealing with the 'terrifying situation'.
In the end, neither young man was shot, and the pair arrived back in the UK just before Christmas 2000. Tom headed for Lullingstone, the estate that had been in his family since 1361 and where he grew up. He knew that, at some point, he'd have to come up with a plan for running it – he just didn't expect that months trapped in a hut would provide the necessary inspiration.
'I feel now that I was meant to go to Columbia,' he says. 'It was meant to happen – to do the garden, to help Mum out. I knew that I'd take it on and do something with it, but I didn't know what the format would be until June 16 2000. It's so odd.'
This year marks a quarter-century since Tom's release, and 20 years since the World Garden opened. Considering the situation in which it was conceived, it is proving to be a real success story (with the mortgage paid off). Last year, 60 coach-loads of visitors came to Lullingstone, three quarters of them headed for the garden, rather than the ancient house beside it.
Lullingstone estate, started in 1497, has lived through murderous monarchs, the Civil War and the Industrial Revolution. By the turn of the 19th century it was 8,000 acres in size and owned by Tom's great-grandfather Sir William Hart Dyke, 7th Baronet, Conservative MP and friend of the future Edward VII.
The MP had a varied career as chief secretary for Ireland, chief secretary to the Treasury under Benjamin Disraeli, the prime minister, and was a pioneer in lawn tennis and squash.
Things began to go awry upon his death in 1931, which was swiftly followed, a month later, by that of his wife. That left their son Oliver with double death duties to pay, since neither of his parents had made proper wills, somewhat ironic, Tom noted in his 2007 memoir, 'given that great-grandad once helped run the Treasury'.
Within two years of his father's death, the new Sir Oliver had offloaded 5,000 acres, and otherwise simplified the family's holdings, selling the remains of Eynsford Castle – less than two miles away – to the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. At the same time, his wife Zoë was making her own mark at Lullingstone, opening a silk farm there in 1932 that supplied the silk for the late Queen's wedding dress and coronation robes.
By the end of the Second World War, during which time Lullingstone was requisitioned by the army – 'we're not far from Biggin Hill and this was known as 'bomb alley,'' says Tom's mother, Sarah Hart Dyke – the estate was considerably reduced.
In 1960, Sir Oliver let the west wing out, and when he died in 1969, his eldest son Derek inherited the baronetcy. He declined to take on Lullingstone too, as had been the original plan, and this passed instead to his younger brother Guy, Tom's father.
With his wife Sarah, his third cousin once removed – 'on mum's passport she went from Miss to Mrs, with the same surname,' says Tom – Guy opened Lullingstone to the public in 1976, with visitors paying 50p a head. Tom was born the same year, and the house has been open ever since.
Though the origins of the World Garden were inspirational, the idea of it in practice was not, to Guy Hart Dyke, the obvious course of action. When his son told him about the idea, he ummed and ahhed. It sounded expensive, he reasoned, plus there was the issue of Lullingstone's position in the chilly Darent valley.
But he was won over, and after a £250,000 mortgage was secured to get it up and running, the garden finally opened on July 16 2005. The ribbon was cut by Tom's maternal grandmother Mary, who had first inspired her grandson's love of plants, giving him a packet of carrot seeds when he was three years old.
As Tom wrote in his memoirs, 'seeing Granny cut the ribbon to the garden … all inspired by that first tiny packet of carrot seeds? Well, that was the highlight of my life full stop.'
Now, the World Garden's popularity far outstrips that of the house. The latter has long proved challenging to maintain, and today its roof particularly troubles Tom and Sarah. 'Lots of other things have been done, but the bit on top, the most expensive bit, hasn't,' says Tom. 'We are really trying to maintain that aspect now – it's not in a good state.'
Indeed, as we talk, there is scaffolding up in the great hall, part of work dealing with water ingress – the unwanted entry of water into a property.
'One day, it shed a load of plaster and something small became mammoth,' says Sarah, whose domain is the house. 'You can see daylight through some of the missing tiles.' Reflecting on her half-century at the house, she describes how Lullingstone 'absolutely defines what you do. It's a duty, we're caretakers, here to mind the shop – and make sure there are lots of lovely puzzles in it to sell'.
Balancing the house and garden has its challenges, but there's no doubt that the World Garden has saved Lullingstone. However, when Tom was in Columbia, distracting himself from his fate with a fanciful garden scheme, he didn't set out with that goal in mind – to find something to save his ancestral home with.
'I thought I'd be shot, I didn't think I'd survive the day,' he says. 'The estate wasn't in the picture.' It's worked out, funnily enough. 'When the house is open, it's fantastic,' he says, 'but the gardens are a by-product of that experience almost being murdered, and they're keeping the place afloat.'
For many people in his position, there is the often discussed burden of big house custodianship. But Tom, whose optimism is infectious, doesn't feel the weight of it all too much.
He is unfazed by being the 20th generation of his family at the helm of Lullingstone. 'Talking about it makes me feel like it's more extraordinary. Because you've grown up here you just get used to things that are, to most people, quite exceptional.'
He talks of the 'lead weights' that people in his position feel about the estates they inherit. 'When you've got 50 emails to reply to, and someone turning up to do some filming, and a pipe's burst in the garden, and some plaster has fallen in … you think, 'what order am I doing this in?' You can feel a bit of lead weight then, but the burden thing – I don't sense it as people think I would because I just love it here. It's unique.'