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Howard Drury will be judging the GroundsFest Innovation Awards which celebrate excellence and innovation across landscaping, amenity management, turf care and related industries.
The winners will be selected on day one of the event (9 September) and celebrated on the same day with champagne courtesy of GroundsFest at 3pm in the HortWeek seminar area (Hall 3). The awards are sponsored by Cramer and Bosch.
See the shortlist here.
What was your journey into the horticulture industry?
I started growing lettuce and potatoes and then when I was 11 my dad built me a greenhouse from bricks from a disused railway station – and from there on I kept growing. I had a part time job aged 13 before joining full time at 16 at Jacksons of Allington. We used to supply Woolworths with bedding plants. At the same time, I took myself off to agricultural college one day a week.
I was offered a place at both Kew and Edinburgh and chose Edinburgh to undertake a three-year Dip course where I gained a Hons pass. Before joining university I asked a young lady who I had met when I was 10 to marry me – we got married at 11am, had the reception at 1pm, and at 3pm we were on the train to Edinburgh! Here I worked in all departments which has given me a good background – I worked on rock garden herbaceous one year, trees and turf the next year, where I learnt a lot about machinery, turf culture and tree climbing, and in the third year propagation and glasshouses.
When it came time to find a job, I took up a role as horticulturist training officer with Birmingham City Council. The role was primarily to teach all aspects of parks work, with special responsibility for teaching arboriculture. While working for Birmingham City Council I used to go down to Edgbaston cricket ground and was taught how to prepare a wicket.
During this time, I found out they were making a TV programme in the park where I was based. I got to know the team well and would provide props and ideas for them. My big break came in 1984 when after having the role of horticultural advisor to the programme was asked to try presenting and went on to research, present and help edit (making sure it was horticulturally correct). I enjoyed presenting on Gardening Time for 11 years before they brought in new presenters.
When Birmingham City Council’s parks department went to private contract there were massive redundancies and I volunteered to be one of them. I went self employed and started leading day trips and holidays in the UK, Europe and as far as New Zealand.
What have been some career highlights over those years?
Career highlights must be gaining all the awards except one at Edinburgh Botanics – I only lost that one award as being slightly dyslexic I knew all the plants in an ID test but spelt several wrong. I got the right letters just in the wrong order. Someone else who didn’t know all the plants beat me as they deducted a mark for each mistake (that someone else being George Anderson, now of the BBC’s Beechgrove Garden). Being lead presenter and consultant on Central TV's Gardening Time was also a highlight, as well as visiting some of the best gardens around the world, and still finding fantastic gardens, nurseries and trials.
What would you say are your areas of expertise?
Areas of expertise include most areas of amenity horticulture – I could still mark out a running track and prepare most fine sports turf surfaces, cricket wickets, tennis courts. I can turf a crown green, which is not an easy one to do! My tree surgery stood me in good stead, and I still keep an interest in tree surgery and safety – being a safety officer has been useful as I had to write safety reports and investigate accidents. As a safety officer, it was interesting to learn why things were going wrong and then try and stop them going wrong again. It is my all-round horticulture that seems to make me popular with the many gardening clubs I visit each year.
What is your fantasy future horticultural innovation?
There’s so much technology we can apply, which we're missing out on. Not just plant labeling systems. Computers could come into all sorts of systems for managing trees, even to the point of having robots pruning trees. We could design equipment that could carry out surveys so we don't have to climb. You see videos from America of dismantling trees using giant hydraulic equipment – we should be able to do a lot more with that.
One of my pet dreams is to see the plants that the great plant hunters introduced maintained. Everything's got to be simplified these days – There are brilliant plants out there being lost because we're not training people, amateurs and professionals, to be plant people.
What are you most looking forward to at GroundsFest as a visitor?
I’m really excited for the show – there is that much to see I might have to cut some of my conversations off so I can get around to everything! I’m looking forward to seeing all the innovation at the show. I want to see the machinery in action and I’ll be taking lots of photographs.
