When the garden at our care home Finborough Court, Great Finborough needed a spruce up, staff knew just who to turn to. David, 74, lives across the way in one of the bungalows at Finborough Court Housing and has spent his working life in horticulture

For David, the love of gardens and the outdoors is deeply rooted in his childhood in Wiltshire. “From the age of about six I was helping my mum in the garden. She taught me all about planting and pruning.”

As a boy, he also enjoyed the joy and freedom of roaming the nearby woodland with his brother, learning to identify all the different plants and trees. “You could go out and just lose yourself for hours. We were always being told off for being late for meals. I feel so sorry for children now, they never get to enjoy that kind of freedom.”

On leaving school, David worked at a pot plant nursery and a farm producing Bird’s Eye peas. But it was the intimacy of working with plants he loved the most and so he then embarked on a nine-month course at the Isle of Ely Horticultural College, giving him the opportunity to explore different growing techniques. This was followed by work on seed trials in Essex and experimental work on a farm in Jersey. He then studied for the prestigious Diploma in Horticulture at Kew Gardens.

The course involved rotating around different areas including arboreal, tropical and alpine.

“My favourite was working with the alpine plants. The tropical plants are all very nice, but they require such special conditions to grow. I liked things I could take home and experiment with. I still have plants today that I can trace back to cuttings I took at Kew.”

While David describes Kew Gardens as superb, city life did not agree with him. “I escaped at every opportunity. I’m a country soul at heart. I could never get used to opening the curtains and looking out over endless rooftops.”

Driven by a desire to get back to the countryside, David set his mind to work hard and managed to complete two three-year courses simultaneously, excelling in his studies.

He stayed one more year at Kew working as a senior gardener before taking an advisory role with Ministry for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. “I’d experiment with different techniques and then visit growers, advising them how to improve the growing of lettuces, cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers.”

When the government pushed for David to charge fees for his time – the service had previously been free to industry – he decided to set up his own advisory business.

Now retired from working life, David serves as an elder at the local Rattlesden Baptist Church. Unsurprisingly, inspiration for sermons and Bible studies often comes from the natural world, with Luke 12:27 having particular resonance. “Plants don’t go rushing around, they stay rooted in the soil absorbing the sunlight and water and nutrients,” says David, “God provides for them and He’ll provide for us too.”