The Adventures of an Eccentric Gardener

An Englishman's Home

The hilarious true story of Tom Hart Dyke's attempts to build the World Garden at Lullingstone Castle in Kent, as seen on BBC 2.

Tom Hart Dyke is surely England's most extraordinary gardener.

Tom Hart Dyke is the Lara Croft of flowers!

Tom Hart Dyke is a plant collector whose enthusiasm for orchids led him to the Darién Gap in Central America, where he was captured (with his travelling companion Paul Winder) by guerrillas and held hostage for nine months. The book of their experiences, The Cloud Garden, was a Sunday Times bestseller in hardback in 2003.

Tom Hart Dyke has a bit of a thing about plants. You might call it an obsession. You might call him certifiable, in fact. But it's a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a large ramshackle country estate and an obsession with plant collecting could want for only one thing - in Tom's case it's a walled garden containing examples of plants collected from every corner of the globe. 
 
Tom's infectious enthusiasm for anything with chlorophyll in it and the hugely ambitious World Garden project he has undertaken at his family home, Lullingstone Castle, in Kent have been documented in a 12-part television series for BBC 2. The first six parts (Save Lullingstone Castle) were shown in spring 2006, and the second six episodes (Return to Lullingstone Castle) in spring 2007. 
 
Tom's attempts to set up the World Garden aren't exactly straightforward. You might imagine, for example, that the easiest way to start preparing the ground inside the walled Elizabethan garden which he transforms into the main part of the world garden would be to enlist the help of a few people and a lot of hard digging. Well not for Tom, who enlists instead two large pigs, who do indeed do a great job of turning over the earth and fertilising it with great organic manure. But the problem is that they keep escaping into the Hart Dyke family burial plot next door where they start digging up Tom's ancestors... 
 
The World Garden is created to bring together a truly amazing collection of plants from every continent and so to show the global origins of the plants we all grow in our gardens. It's already establishing itself as a tourist attraction of some note as well as an educational resource. 
 
This is a book for all those who bought Tim Smit's Lost Gardens of Heligan. It's stuffed full of fascinating botanical information as well as the story of Tom's hapless struggle to overcome huge logistical nightmares. It's a riveting, hilarious story of English eccentricity in full bloom.

Tom Hart Dyke

Paul Winder

'Funny, engrossing and moving... Throughout the dark days, the luminous personalities of Hart Dyke and Winder shine through'

'Part adventure story, part travel memoir, part personal revelation, The Cloud Garden is one of the most exciting and interesting books I have read for years'

'A terrifying but hilarious story of true British grit and eccentricity...An emotional rollercoaster of fear and farce'

'An amazing story, well-told, thrilling and moving...kidnapped by terrorists, held hostage at gunpoint, in fear of being beheaded...A mixture of hell and farce'

The Darién Gap is a place of legend. The only break in the Pan-American highway, which runs from Alaska to the tip of South America, it is an almost impregnable strip of swamp, jungle and cloud forest between the vast landmasses of North and South America. Stories of abduction and murder there are rife and in recent years more people have successfully climbed Everest or trekked to the South Pole than have crossed the Darién Gap. 
 
In 2000, Tom Hart Dyke, a young botanist, set off to Central America with one thing on his mind: orchids. He knew that in order to find the rare and beautiful species he so fervently admired, he would have to visit some of the most inhospitable places on earth. Unbeknown to Tom, another young explorer, Paul Winder, was backpacking through the area at the same time. Though he sometimes worked freelance in the City of London, Paul was a fearless and intrepid traveller, happier scaling volcanoes than lounging on beaches. In every bar and café along his route, rumours abounded of the Darién Gap - and the more he heard, the greater became his desire to make the journey. Pure chance brought Paul and Tom together in northern Mexico; they formed an instant bond and their fate was sealed. 
 
Ignoring a final, succinct warning from the Lonely Planet guide - 'Don't even think about it!' - Tom and Paul set off into the Darién: Tom in search of orchids, Paul in search of adventure. They would find plenty of each. For six days they made good progress. Then, just hours away from Colombia, the dream ended and the horror began. Paul and Tom were ambushed by FARC guerrillas who were to hold them hostage for the next nine months. From that day on, their survival was a matter of extraordinary endurance, incredible ingenuity and not a little good luck ...

Tom Hart Dyke

Praise for The Cloud Garden

'Funny, engrossing and moving... Throughout the dark days, the luminous personalities of Hart Dyke and Winder shine through'

'Part adventure story, part travel memoir, part personal revelation, The Cloud Garden is one of the most exciting and interesting books I have read for years'

'Truly captivating'

'Funny, engrossing and moving... Throughout the dark days, the luminous personalities of Hart Dyke and Winder shine through'

'Part adventure story, part travel memoir, part personal revelation, The Cloud Garden is one of the most exciting and interesting books I have read for years'

'Truly captivating'

'Funny, engrossing and moving... Throughout the dark days, the luminous personalities of Hart Dyke and Winder shine through'

'Part adventure story, part travel memoir, part personal revelation, The Cloud Garden is one of the most exciting and interesting books I have read for years'

'Truly captivating'

Books by Tom Hart Dyke

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