Prue Leith: ‘If you've had a quarrel, a walk in the garden calms things down'

Telegraph

3 days ago

Prue Leith was born in South Africa and moved to London at 20 to attend the Cordon Bleu Cookery School. She later launched a catering business and opened a restaurant in Notting Hill, which was awarded a Michelin star, as well as her own cookery school, which she sold in 1993. As well as writing 12 cookery books and eight novels, she has appeared in several television series, and has been a judge on The Great British Bake Off since 2017; the show will return to Channel 4 in September. She was made a dame in 2021.
Where do you live?
I have lived in Gloucestershire for nearly 50 years. For 46 of them, I was in a big house about 500 yards away from where we are now. I bought it with my first husband, Rayne, when we were looking for somewhere to bring up our two children. It was a proper Cotswold farmhouse, with outhouses, a barn and 150 acres. Back then, the Cotswolds were very unfashionable. Everybody wanted to live in the Home Counties. As a result, our property was valued on the agricultural land, which was quite poor, so I got a big place for very little. But now the children have moved out, and since property prices have shot up, when I married my second husband, John, I decided it was time to downsize. I sold it all, except for 50 acres which had an old farmhouse on it. We knocked it down and built a modern one instead. It bugs me that having slaved away at cooking, catering, restaurants, novels and TV work, none of it would have made me enough money to do this.
What kind of garden did you want to have?
Our first job was to deal with the concrete. The previous tenant farmer couldn't make money out of his farm, so he farmed other people's land and had put down lots of concrete to park his vehicles on. To do anything, it meant we had to dig it all up, and we spent a year doing it.
The garden at the previous house was very English, with herbaceous borders, a croquet lawn and a rose tunnel. I wanted this one to be simpler and more water conscious, so one of our first projects was to create a grass garden for a drier climate. I was inspired by Piet Oudolf's stunning perennial meadow at the Hauser & Wirth Gallery in Somerset – he creates the best grass gardens in the world. We've tried to do something similar to create wonderful tonal colours and differing heights, just on a smaller scale. My favourites are Stipa gigantea, Festuca glauca and Miscanthus sinensis 'Morning Light'.
What's your husband's favourite area?
Well, when John and I moved into this house, I said to him that we weren't going to start growing veg because I'd done enough midnight harvesting, trying to freeze things like the spinach crop. And then you've got the inconsistency of vegetables… 500 courgettes one year and none the next. It's all exhausting!
But, one day, I saw these big containers arriving and I asked John what they were for. He said, 'Ah, they're for my vegetables.' I said: 'I thought we weren't going to have a vegetable garden?' He replied: 'It's not a vegetable garden, it's just pots.' So, we've now got more than 50 pots, and every pot has veg in it. Having said that, he's just pulled out our first new potatoes and I couldn't think of anything nicer for supper than new potatoes with lots of butter and mint.
What types of trees do you have?
We wanted a large apple and pear orchard with heritage varieties, so we bought 250 saplings, only to discover that the bloody heritage apples look like scabby golf balls and are as sour as hell. Every autumn, we make apple juice and tonnes of apple jelly, but there's only so much you can foist upon friends and local charities. We do, however, have the most wonderful pears, and nothing beats a good pear tarte Tatin or a pear and chocolate bread-and-butter pudding. We also planted a nuttery for the birds and an avenue of oaks and rowans through one of the fields – I just wanted an avenue! I then realised we ought to have something at the end of it, so John built a hill with leftover spoil and the local blacksmith is now making a dovecote to put on top of it. I just hope the doves crap on the neighbours' house and not ours.
Over the years, have your gardens become a place of memories?
When I think of my first husband, I think of the lake we created in the field opposite our house. He was an author and expert on China, and it was his dream to have a Chinese garden – like a scene on a Blue Willow plate. Beside the lake, we had a pagoda, a red bridge and a weeping willow. We loved it.
He was ill for the last 15 years of his life, but even towards the end of it, he loved looking out at the garden, and that's when I decided to create a box parterre. I took 2,000 cuttings and prepared them while I sat at his bedside. I had an old-fashioned frame and was very careful to use the right mix of sand and soil to start them in. There was only one hiccup: our cat. I came out one day to find him sitting in what he thought was the best litter tray ever.
Did you have a garden as a child?
I grew up in Johannesburg where we had a house with a large garden full of plants and trees. My father was the director of a big chemical company; my mother was a well-known actress. Some of my earliest memories are of her weeding with a big hat on. South Africa has a great climate: it only rains at 4 o'clock every second day and the skies are blue all winter. The tree I particularly remember is the jacaranda at the front with its beautiful blue flowers. My brother and I were given vegetable plots to look after, but I was more interested in riding my bike. I'd line up a series of logs on the lawn and pretend I had a pony… jumping over them. When my children were little, I was probably out in the garden weeding, too. They were fortunate enough to have real ponies.
What do you love about your garden now?
As I get older, I walk around less due to boring old-age complaints, like my knee or my back. But in our courtyard, I've found such joy in filling large troughs with spring bulbs. They add such colour and when they're finished, John and I plant them in the fields, although we do have our gardener Philippa to help us with such tasks. I did vow to give up on herbaceous borders, but I miss roses and peonies so much, I've decided to make a new one. We've installed tanks by two barns to collect rainwater, so I won't have to feel too guilty about watering it. John also bought me a Polaris, which is a cross between a tractor and a buggy; it goes through water and snow, over bumps and ditches, and when the pasture is 3ft high, I can charge through it!
What does the garden mean to you?
A garden is many things. Certainly, if you've had a quarrel with a child or your beloved, a walk in the garden calms things down. Stay inside and you brood. One of my favourite places to go is a little wood we have that we call the dell. It was very soggy, so having cleared the brambles, John drained it and created a stream and a path. We then planted wild garlic and bluebells. It's beautiful… so peaceful. Other times, I love the noise of kids running around. We've got 12 grandchildren between us and not long ago, we bought 12 different trees, one for each child. Everyone came over to plant them; the older ones dug holes, the little ones poured water over their feet. It made me think of that lovely Chinese proverb: 'Society thrives where old men plant trees in whose shade they will never sit.'