A life spent in the gardens

They'll wander through them of their own accord to escape, but trying to get them back again is another matter.

They usually end up jumping over the fence. Anything up to 8ft high.

As a gardener, man and boy for 50 years at Spetchley Park, near Worcester, AWOL deer were a problem Brian Tombs faced along with leaks in the lake or moles on the lawn.

When the mood struck, some of the 200 residents of Spetchley's deer park would have an away day in the adjoining formal gardens.

Mind you, as there are 30 acres of them, it might take a while before the intruders were spotted and a round-up posse formed from the estate staff.

"You could chase these bloomin' deer all over the place," said Brian, "but you'd hardly ever get them to go back through a gate. They just wouldn't have it.

"Whether they were being awkward or scared, I don't know. But just as they'd got you all sweating and cussing, they'd hop over the fence sweet as anything. A deer can jump six or eight foot, no trouble."

It's a long time now since young Brian Tombs would spend winter afternoons with Bill Brown, Spetchley Park's head gardener in the years after the Second World War, peeling bark off the grape vines.

These would then be sprayed with a solution of one part meths to seven parts water to kill the bugs.

The Tombs family lived in an estate cottage, although Brian's father Arthur was actually head horseman at the stables of Worcester Corporation in The Butts.

As a lad, Brian used to play with the Brown children, Billy junior and Agnes, whose home had the added attraction of the only television in the village.

"I can see it now. It was a nine inch Bush that used to stand in the corner of the room," he said.

"It was quite something in those days."

Brian also took to helping Mr Brown in the park gardens and, when he left school at 14 in 1954, he was offered a job.

"It was close to home and convenient, so I said 'Yes'. We worked from 7.30am until 5pm on weekdays and 7.30am until noon on Saturdays.

"The pay for my first fortnight was £3 and 15 shillings.

"I started in the September and my first job was weeding the paths in the kitchen garden.

"I soon found out Mr Brown was a hard man. You had to do the job properly or he'd be on to you.

"In the autumn we had to collect up all the leaves in the garden.

"Rake them up by hand and put them in wooden handcarts. The trouble was that as you went over the edges of the lawns, the carts used to tip and a few leaves would fall off.

"When you got back Mr Brown would be waiting. 'Where have you been?' he'd shout. 'Leaving these leaves all over the place'.

"Clearing up the leaves was the job I disliked most in the gardens. It could take three months or more and I would often take my holidays in the winter to avoid it. These days we use machinery whenever possible.

"Although Mr Brown was a hard taskmaster, he was very fair and I learnt a lot from him.

"But eventually we worked out a dodge.

"When one of the staff wanted a break, they used to ask him a question about a plant, knowing Mr Brown would sit down, get out his tobacco tin, roll a cigarette and take at least 15 minutes to explain the answer.

"He never twigged the real reason for our questions, but that was where I learnt the most."

Brian Tombs eventually took over as head gardener at Spetchley in 1978, heading the team of four in the gardens.

Since then he has worked closely with owner John Berkeley, who inherited the estate on the death of his father, Captain Robert Berkeley, in 1969.

"Mr Berkeley has been very keen on developing more of the rare plants," said Brian, "and that's suited me down to the ground. He has often asked my advice when planting and I would like to thank him for the past 50 years."

In fact, Brian has become something of a local celebrity, appearing twice on television as part of his job and once travelling to Kenya to lecture about it.

This autumn he retired as Spetchley's head gardener, handing over the reins to Kate Portman.

But he will continue to live in his cottage on the estate and look after his small herd of beef cattle, which he keeps in the field next to his home.

All appear to have names and bellow as soon as Brian sticks his head out of the cottage door.

Fortunately, unlike the deer, they don't get into the garden.

Memories of the man who planted the trees on Whittington Tump

"One of my early jobs was to help plant 12 trees on the Whittington Tump, of which only one survives.

It was quite a task carrying all the trees, spades and other sundries up the steep tump.

Unfortunately, only one windswept tree survives, which I think is a horse chestnut, but when seen from the motorway it makes an outstanding landmark.

"My Saturday morning job was to wash and oil all the tools, and then fetch water from the lake to fill the water tanks in the four greenhouses. This was done using an old water cowl, or container on wheels.

The difficulty with this task was that the lake and the greenhouses are at opposite ends of the garden, and that the wheels on the cowl had flat tyres.

"During the hunting season my Saturday work was sometimes interrupted by the sound of a hunting horn.

I could not resist sneaking off to watch the hounds.

One day, I was supposed to be working, but went across the fields to Whittington Rough.

Just as I arrived, so did Captain Berkeley, the owner of the Spetchley estate. I hid behind a large oak tree until he left. I don't suppose he would have minded though because he was Master of the Berkeley Hunt in Gloucestershire.

I would always go back to the gardens to finish my Saturday morning tasks.

"On Fridays, throughout the winter, I was called upon to go beating for pheasant in the woods with other members of the estate staff.

Captain Berkeley and his guests would go shooting while the staff walked through the scrub causing the pheasant to fly.

This could be a wet and dirty job if the weather was bad.

"The winters were much colder than they are today. We often had very hard frosts.

In the vegetable garden the best job was the double digging and manuring of the beds. This kept us nice and warm, but I often suffered from chilblains on my ears and feet.

I remember the winter of 1947 when the snow was so deep the hedges and ditches disappeared.

I was only a child and had to help my dad cut a passage through the snow, throw the snow up eight feet to clear a way to the livestock, then do it all again after the animals had been fed as the snow had drifted and refilled the way we had cleared.

"Spetchley Gardens covers 30 acres but used to also include two orchards. One of seven acres was grubbed up but the other still exists, full of rare fruit trees.

It was enjoyable having a chance to do different jobs like apple, pear and damson picking.

"Wet days in the gardens would find us in the pot shed scrubbing all the pots with soda water to kill all the bugs.

We would get all the top soil that we needed for potting from the brook at White Ladies Aston.

It was part of the estate and the topsoil was very good as it was flood plain, where silt from the river would wash on to the pasture land.

"The next head gardener after Mr Brown was a Mr Smith, but he only lasted 12 months. After him came Mr John Wall. He loved watching cricket and I still remember his Morris Minor, number LBW 171!

Mr Wall came from Wisley where he had been in charge of the Rock Garden. He was very strict and was difficult to get on with. Six weeks after he arrived he started to pick on me. I was not having that and let him know (my temper is well known).

After that he didn't pick on me again and we became the best of friends, until he had a stroke and had to retire.

After Mr Wall retired a Mr Pomfret took over. He was a great man, always cheerful although he wore bandages on his head and face owing to an accident.

After Mr Pomfret retired he went to live in North Wales and not long after went into hospital for a minor operation on his face. He never came round from the anaesthetic. We all went from Spetchley to North Wales to the funeral as he was so well respected.

"Then it was my chance to be head gardener. Due to the amount I learnt from all the past head gardeners there are few plants I don't know. People would often bring pieces of plant and sometimes even seedlings for me to identify.

I was also hard on my staff. I once made one lad go and cut the same piece of grass six times. He complained "do I have to?" "Yes" I answered firmly "until you do it thoroughly".

To this day he has been one of my best friends and even came all the way from Hampshire to be at my retirement party.

"I don't mind weeding, as to me the time seems to go quickly, but my favourite job of all was nursery work.

I love propagating, especially anything that was thought of as difficult. One plant I particularly remember that no one then could propagate was Berberis montana.

It took me 10 years before I propagated a young plant and to this day I have no idea what I did right!

"I remember a couple of incidents that were worrying at the time but I can now look back on and laugh.

In the 1960s, Captain Robert Berkeley had a stroke and was confined to an electric wheelchair.

He could never master the controls and would often crash into the greenhouses and doors.

One day I heard him shouting "Brian, Brian, quick, quick!" I ran round to the greenhouse from where I had heard him call and there was the wheelchair surrounded by a cloud of smoke.

Captain Berkeley had been driving with the handbrake on. As I put the fire out he said to me "I didn't know what to do: drive the damn thing into the lake and get drowned or stay in it and get cremated!"

"The lake in the gardens was leaking badly at the sluice and there was a thin film of ice on the water.

To get to the sluice it was decided to use a boat and load it with all the tools and equipment for the repair. We put in 12 breeze blocks, corrugated iron sheets, shovels etc.

I persuaded the other staff to get in too, so three of us and the equipment set off from the steps. One bloke was rather reluctant, but started to punt without realising that we were grounded.

We did move off but the water was only three inches below the rim of the boat. About half way across I decided to take over and stood up.

As I did so, the boat lurched to one side and as if in slow motion turned over with me underneath. I managed to right the boat and we recovered everything from the 12 feet of very cold water, except one shovel which, as far as I know, is still there today.

The then head gardener, Mr Pomfret, and the other gardener stood on the bank laughing before they realised we might be in difficulties and helped us out."