Big Red Book

Celebrating television's This Is Your Life

• HOME
• |
• SERIES
• |
• SUBJECTS
• |
• FEATURES
• |
• ARTICLES
• |
• INTERVIEWS
• |
• ABOUT

THIS IS YOUR LIFE - Percy Thrower, gardener and broadcaster, was surprised by Eamonn Andrews at the Ideal Home Exhibition in London's Earl's Court, having been led to believe he was there for a photo shoot for Amateur Gardening magazine.

Percy was born at Horwood House in Buckinghamshire, where his father was head gardener. After leaving school, he worked under his father for four years before securing his first gardening job at the Royal Gardens at Windsor Castle in 1931. He later worked for the Parks Department in Leeds until having passed the Royal Horticultural Society's General Exam in 1937, he moved to Derby, where he worked his way up to Assistant Parks Superintendent.

Following a move to Shrewsbury in 1946, where he became the youngest ever Parks Superintendent at the age of 32, Percy began sharing his knowledge of gardening on regional radio and later became a household name through his appearances on various television programmes, initially on the BBC's Gardening Club in 1957, and later on the BBC's Gardeners' World from 1968.

"Oh Eamonn, very nice to see you! You've planted a very big surprise! I thought someone had fallen in the water!"

programme details...

• Edition No: 435
• Subject No: 432
• Broadcast date: Wed 31 Mar 1976
• Broadcast time: 7.00-7.30pm
• Recorded: Wed 10 Mar 1976
• Venue: Euston Road Studios
• Series: 16
• Edition: 21
• Code name: Root

on the guest list...

• Lesley Judd
• Peter Purves
• Shep - dog
• Bob Musk
• Connie - wife
• Margaret - daughter
• Susan - daughter
• Ann - daughter
• Mabel - sister-in-law
• Maurice - brother
• Harry - brother
• Maud - sister
• Joan - sister
• Ken Hodgkinson
• Arthur Billitt
• Mai Zetterling
• Harry Wheatcroft
• Jim Smith
• Leonard Dando
• Ted Sturgiss
• Tom Holt
• Fred Newman
• Ursula Stoye
Filmed tributes:
• Isobel Barnett
• Simon Williams
• Vince Hill
• Tina Lunny
• students of the Royal Normal College for the Blind, Rowton Castle

production team...

• Researcher: Lavinia Warner
• Writer: John Sandilands
• Director: Mike Dormer
• Executive Producer: Jack Andrews
• Producer: Jack Crawshaw

• names above in bold indicate subjects of This Is Your Life

Life As We Know It

highlighting the experts

Vince Hill

Simon Williams

Interviews

Margaret, Susan and Ann, daughters of Percy Thrower, recall this edition of This Is Your Life in an exclusive interview recorded in August 2017

Screenshots of Percy Thrower This Is Your Life - and a photograph of Percy Thrower's big red book

Percy Thrower recalls his experience of This Is Your Life in his autobiography, My Lifetime of Gardening...

If the Victoria Medal of Honour is the highest award horticulture can ofter to its gardening sons, to appear on This is Your Life must be one of the highest honours the medium of television offers anyone who has been in the public eye. It is a recognition, I suppose, that one is known to many people and that they will be interested to know more about one's life and background.

Many a time I had watched Eamonn Andrews and his This is Your Life programme never dreaming that the day would come when I would be the subject of one. When it did come - in March 1976 - I can truthfully say that I was taken completely by surprise. Watching the programmes I had always felt that the 'victim' must know something about what was going on: it was such an elaborate set-up and involved so many people and needed such careful timing that I was convinced that some collaboration had taken place. Yet this had always been denied by the participants.

So how did they set me up? First of all let me say that it came out later that my wife and family had known about it and were working on it for six months before the day. Yes, six months, and I had not the faintest idea that anything out of the ordinary was going on. I even walked into the house one night much earlier than expected and finding the kitchen table covered with all the old family photographs said to Connie, 'What's all this about?' and accepted without the slightest suspicion her explanation that she was just going through them to sort them out.

Then I was to go up to London to attend Flora 76 and Peter Wood, editor of Amateur Gardening, (the magazine was one of the sponsors of Flora 76) phoned to say that he had a new photographer and was anxious to have a picture of me in the gardens of the Ideal Homes Exhibition at Olympia which was on at the same time as Flora 76. This phone call came some two months before the event which I suppose should have made me a little suspicious but being used to the strange ways of the Press I accepted without a further thought. Anyway, it was quite normal to be asked to be photographed by some paper or other.

Flora 76 came and I gave the opening talk in the morning. I was being watched, I learnt later, to see that I did not do anything out of character such as suddenly disappearing or forgetting I had an appointment later with the photographer. Peter Wood arrived and took me out to lunch at the 'Old Cheshire Cheese' in Fleet Street which was very pleasant and put me in a cheerful mood. That over I went to my hotel for a short rest, Peter having said that he would pick me up at tea-time and take me to Olympia where we were due at five o'clock for the photographing.

At the Ideal Homes Exhibition one of the first things I saw on entering was a television camera with a light on and a microphone over the top. The gardens were also lit up for television. This was all a familiar sight to me and I remarked, 'They're doing television from here?' to which Peter, without turning a hair, replied, 'They're always doing television at the Ideal Homes Exhibition.' Quite unsuspicious still, I walked on and passing some plastic cherry trees jokingly pointed them out and remarked, 'Prunus plasticiensis, no doubt?' Peter laughed and then the photographer arrived and began to pose me by a bay tree and, handing me a pair of secateurs, took a picture of me pruning. Then he led me to a bed of tulips and asked me to pretend to be doing something with one of the plants. All this time I could still see the television cameras and why I was so dumb I can't think. Anyway I reached over to the tulips and as I did so there came a burst of laughter and I thought someone must have fallen in the water or something. At the same moment I felt a tap on my shoulder and a voice I had heard before saying: 'Excuse me, I just want to interrupt these photographs for a second...' I looked up and it was Eamonn Andrews holding a book and a microphone. I said enquiringly, 'Hallo?' and then he went on '...because, Britain's head gardener of radio and television fame, Percy Thrower, tonight - This is Your Life!'

Even then I didn't quite grasp it: it all struck me as funny for some reason or other and I began to laugh and said something like, 'This is a joke, isn't it?' but Eamonn said, 'You've planted a few surprises in your time, Percy, now here's one for you.'

I went off with Eamonn and his staff in a kind of daze.

When we arrived at the studio a crowd of teenagers were screaming their heads off and I wondered if they had anything to do with me - but I needn't have worried; they were waiting for some pop star.

I was put in a dressing room where on a table was gin, tonic water, champagne and cigars. 'Sit down and make yourself comfortable,' they said, but they never left me - not for a moment. I noticed a shirt and tie on a hanger in a corner and asked why they had put me in someone else's dressing room. 'Oh, no,' they said, 'the shirt and tie are yours - your wife brought them in because she knew that the shirt you went out in this morning was not suitable for television. And I had to change. A little later I was taken along a corridor, escorted all the way and not allowed to deviate to right or left in case I met someone I was not supposed to see, and arrived in the studio where Eamonn and all his technical staff were waiting.

Things began to happen so quickly that I just didn't have time to get worried or frightened. Eamonn began by saying that as a tribute to the 'gardener's lad who was to become the nation's head gardener with literally millions following his advice in newspapers, radio and television', would I watch the screen in front of me on which I would see and hear from just a few of my 'devoted followers'.

On to the screen came Isobel, Lady Barnett, in her garden at Leicester, and she spoke of the days when we had worked together on afternoon television and how I had given her many gardening hints and how she had picked my brains. She finished by saying, 'Anytime you're passing, do pop in because... I'm having a little trouble with a cypripedium orchid...'

Isobel was followed by actor Simon Williams, The Hon. James Bellamy of the television series Upstairs, Downstairs. Speaking from his conservatory he said that he had once called me the 'Dr Spock of the garden world' but that I had replied that I had never had to get up in the middle of the night to attend a rose bush with colic.

Next on the screen appeared singing star Vince Hill who, speaking from his greenhouse, said: 'Do you remember this place... the very same you came to for a look at my cucumbers?' He went on: 'I well remember when we knew you were coming my wife Ann and I came out into this greenhouse, gave it a good clean up and made it look spick and span. And I'll never forget your first words when you came in here. You took one look around and said, "That's what I like to see... just like mine. A real scruffy greenhouse". However, you did cure my cucumbers and they went from strength to strength... just like yourself.'

(I had been to see Vince's cucumbers - and his tomatoes as well - because the fruits of both had developed some very peculiar shapes. I was able to identify the cause as damage from selective weed killer. And another thing, though Vince probably never knew it, I was nearly a guest on his own This is Your Life which went out shortly before mine. I had agreed to take part but about two weeks before the programme was to go on I was rung up and told that they were very sorry but now that they had studied the script there would not be time to fit me in. I found out later that this was not the real reason: it was that my This is Your Life was to follow closely after Vince's and it would have looked slightly odd to see me in both of these programmes.)

Then the screen showed the Blue Peter programme and the legpull with the waxwork model of myself that I have described earlier on in this chapter. The picture faded from the screen and through the door of the studio came Lesley Judd of Blue Peter. She said that I had always managed to explain the complications of gardening in terms that she and her colleagues John Noakes and Peter Purves were able to understand but that one member of the team took whatever I said rather too literally - he never stopped digging. It was, of course, Shep the dog who had dug up many a seedling I had planted in the Blue Peter garden. And in came Shep with Peter Purves who informed me that Shep was not only asking my forgiveness for digging up the seedlings but also for regarding all Percy Thrower plants that stood upright as lamp posts.

Then Eamonn dwelt on my years as a 'royal gardener' and announced to the audience that I had made a name for myself almost as soon as I arrived at Windsor. I wondered what was coming and then a voice that I didn't recall but knew I had heard before said, 'That was because Percy started by courting the head gardener's daughter'. It was no wonder I found the voice a little difficult to place for I had not heard it for over forty years: it belonged to one of the lads who had been in the bothy with me at Windsor, Bob Musk. Seeing him in the flesh again brought back many memories. Bob went on to enlarge about me courting the head gardener's daughter. 'Lads of the bothy,' he said, 'were not even allowed to look at the head gardener's daughters..., but when we found that Percy had the nerve to start courting Connie we realised that he was destined for something greater.'

Then, on cue, in came my wife Connie and my three daughters Margaret, Susan and Ann. Then Connie's sister Mabel was mentioned and the viewers were told how she had been in on all the secrets of our courtship. 'And where's Mabel now?' Eamonn asked, all innocent-like. 'In Newfoundland,' Connie told him, 'she's been living there these last thirty years.' I didn't realise what it was leading up to until Eamonn announced, 'But the girl who helped to bring you two together... is not in Newfoundland, Canada. Tonight we have flown her three thousand miles to join you again and here she is!' And through the doorway came Mabel... it was just unbelievable!

My brothers and sisters followed, then Ken Hodgkinson whom I have spoken of in my chapter on Derby Parks, Arthur Billitt (who had been with me that morning and had excused himself saying that he had a meeting in the afternoon!) and then, totally unexpected, someone I had never met but whom I remembered writing to with regard to some query or other. It was none other than the famous film actress, writer and director, Mai Zetterling. ITV had flown her all the way from Sweden to take part in the programme. In her delightful accent she said: 'I was a fan, a very great fan of yours, Percy. My husband knew about it and wrote asking if you would be kind enough to send me a letter for Christmas... with some advice about growing lilies. And,' she went on, 'do you know what I think you did. I think you sent your greenfingers in that letter. Because those lilies, because of what you said, grew into the most indecent lilies... not five, or ten, blooms... there were fifteen, twenty, twenty-five... quite frightening!'

The next surprise was the appearance of the daughter of Herr Witte, the parks superintendent of Berlin with whom I had built the English Garden in that city back in 1951.

Harry Wheatcroft, a friend whom I had known personally since the war years and of for many years before that came bounding in carrying a large bunch of the Percy Thrower rose. I regard Harry as one of the greatest characters and publicity agents that British horticulture has ever had. He was outstanding wherever he put in an appearance. A great rose grower, he has probably promoted the rose industry more than anyone else in modern times. He used to pull my leg when we met and I pulled his. On this occasion he spoke about the rose that had been named after me. 'I've had him in a bed at home for many years,' he said, 'he's rather a spreading grower, so to keep him in I planted Madame Butterfly all around him... and he has behaved very well ever since.'

He went on to say that he had known me for over thirty years and kindly said that I had done more than any person he knew to help Britain become even more beautiful than ever. 'He is virile, active, he hasn't got the middle age spread the same as me: a true gardener and I am sure every gardener in England is toasting him tonight.' Harry's words moved me considerably.

The official part of the This is Your Life ended with a reunion of bothy boys from Windsor most of whom I had not seen for over forty years. But the unofficial celebrations went on late into the night and when it was all over I knew I had been through one of the most moving experiences of my life. Even now, when I look through the album of photographs that I was presented with or listen to the record of the proceedings, the memories come crowding back and I think to myself how lucky I am to be blessed with such a family and friends and to be able to have lived such a full life in the world of gardening.

I realise my life has been fulfilled in almost every way I can think of or wish for. I began my story by saying that from my earliest days I wanted to be a gardener and that my one ambition was to be a head gardener like my father. Well, I have been a gardener all my life and in recent years I have had the honour of being called Britain's Head Gardener. Thus I think I have fulfilled my ambition to an extent few can hope for. What can any man want more?

Timothy O'Sullivan recalls this edition of This Is Your Life in his book, Percy Thrower, A Biography...

At Clack's Farm there is a five-barred gate upon which Percy and Arthur sometimes rested or posed during a recording of Gardener's World. Lady visitors to Clack's Farm on open days would make for this gate and if necessary form a queue to file past, touching the top rail rather as if it were an icon in an Orthodox church.

Equally exotically, Percy's ways with plants attracted the admiration of the Swedish actress Mai Zetterling whose husband, possibly bored by having Percy quoted all the time, induced him to write to his wife about her lilies.

He duly did so and the letter was much appreciated; so much so that when in 1976 Percy was given the bizarre accolade of popular approval, an edition of This Is Your Life, Mai Zetterling was specially flown in to meet her hero for the first time.

It was manifest from the programme that the actuality of Percy did not disappoint her. Such gestures of appreciation were a small part of Percy's reward which lay, as it had always done, in making a living out of what was coincidentally his hobby.