I was lucky enough as a young boy to meet Sir Peter Scott on Lord Rab Butler’s estate, at Stansted Hall in Essex. See below details.
My Dad worked for Lord Rab Butler in No. 11 Downing Street when I was a child and, due to this connection, during the Blitz my family were evacuated to Gatcombe Park then Stansted Hall, Essex, due to various levels of Neurodiversity, I was struggling at school, plus my small gang of Estate kids were upsetting Lady Sidney Butler, leaping onto the backs of Lady Butler’s Shetland ponies until they bucked us, and all manner of other stuff.
A fleeting meeting with Lord Rab Butler and Sir Peter Scott led to some mentoring from Lord Rab, which gave me, as a nine or ten-year-old some confidence as he talked to me as if I was an adult. I was no more trouble after this.
Imagesfrom my autograph book (above) show the uncanny seeds sown by that meeting, which took me on a journey into agriculture, conservation, and landscaping. Amazingly, Sir Peter Scott appeared again (as he was to do five more times, to my advantage, in my life) when I was a shepherd on Welney Wash. At that time Sir Peter bought the land to build the Welney Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT), sending me into a self-employed career.
Years later, in 2005, I name-dropped Sir Peter Scott and my connection with Welney/WWT Reserve while pitching for sponsors for creation of an Essex Wildlife Trust RHS Chelsea Garden. Our pitch was successful and when Grahame Game (Wildlife Trust Press Officer), Stephen Hall (Giles Landscapes Designer), and I came out of our new sponsor, Lush’s Press Office in Carnaby Street we were so lit up that we almost danced down Carnaby Street to the Lush Shop, where we picked up delights for our families. We had the best part of £100K to spend and built the Essex Wildlife Trust Lush Garden (Lush cosmetics are an environmentally friendly company, using no animal testing).
The upper image below shows TV gardener Charlie Dimmock in the Silver Medal winning Essex Wildlife Trust Lush Garden at RHS Chelsea. For footage of this event, click on the following link: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=wildlife+trust+lush+garden
See Chris Packham and various celebrity gardeners showcasing our garden. The Wildflower Meadow was clearly best in the Show.
The lower image shows Giles Landscapes’ in-house Designer, Stephen Hall, with Sir Terry Wogan and owner of Lush, Mark Constantine in the RHS Chelsea Lush Garden. Mark Constantine was massively enthusiastic about wildlife, especially the winged variety. Lush, who were celebrating their 10th anniversary in 2005, were our sole sponsor for that year’s RHS Chelsea Garden.
Without the excellent design support of Stephen Hall as Giles Landscapes’ in-house Designer, latterly supported by Fen Jane, the company would not have had the RHS Chelsea opportunity’s Stephen had five years of travelling for his day release BSc course, travelling to Writtle College, and Jane studied Design at Chapel Manor.
Later in the career of Giles Landscapes, a project to revamp Oundle School’s gardens and Chapel Lawn gardens was massively good for us. Relocation of a naked statue, incorrectly rumoured to be of Sir Peter Scott as a boy, was included in the project. The media coverage about Sir Peter Scott’s connection to the statue really was immense. Giles Landscapes received a large amount of media interest in relation to the statue’s controversy. At this time, my business had a half-page spread in the Daily Telegraph.
The image below is of a page from Sir Peter Scott’s autobiography, explaining the true history of the Oundle School Chapel naked boy statue.
The image below shows an edition of the Giles Landscapes Newsletter, featuring the Oundle School gardens project. Fen Jane, one of Giles Landscapes’ designers, contributed a lot of content and design to the Newsletter as well as our projects.
The loss of my very amazing wife, Sue, to cancer inspired my company to raise monies for Macmillan Cancer through design and display of the Fen Ben Garden, first viewed on Sir Peter Scott’s Fen Tigers Day at Welney WWT.
The image below shows Giles Landscapes’ Designer, Fen Jane (second from the right) and on the left is Paula Heaney, my trusted Financial Controller, next to my trusted Q.E., Emma Baldwin. They are standing in front of the Fen Ben Garden, which became the prototype of the Fenland Alchemist Garden. The Fen Ben Garden can be seen more clearly in the lower image on this page.
The Fen Ben Garden pictured above was developed further and entered into the Sandringham Flower Show in 2008, where it won Gold, Best in Show, and Peoples’ Award. After this success we had a brainstorming session, and designer Fen Jane came up with the name Fenland Alchemist Garden. A forge was added to the revamped version of the original Fen Ben Garden because our character, Fen Ben, was the son of the local blacksmith’s daughter. Fen Ben was born half a mile from Plover Cottage (Ernie James’s cottage) on Bedford Bank, Welney. It could generally be said that Fen Ben, as a young lad, was influenced by Ernie James – the last of the Fen Tigers (as seen in the 1975 Anglia TV documentary ‘A man between three rivers’, available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dp6UXLD00GA).
The image below shows actress Helena Bonham-Carter having a look around the Fen Ben Garden as transformed into the Fenland Alchemist Garden at RHS Chelsea in 2009. The Garden won Gold Medal Best in Show and came Second in the Peoples’ Award. The influences of my late wife, Sue, and Sir Peter Scott set my company on an amazing journey.
To win a gold medal and Best in Show was a great adventure, and a credit to the totally in-house team. The garden was totally sponsored by the company and designed by our in-house designers, Steve Hall and Jane Besser. It was also built by our own team.
The image below, and poem, show the development of the ‘Fen Ben’ character. The photo shows Fen Ben practising his public speaking.
In 2010, Giles Landscapes’ Designers Fen Jane and Stephen Hall developed the Industrial Evolution Garden for Sandringham Flower Show. Video footage of Jane and Stephen showcasing the Garden, with Jane having the job of introducing our team to the then Prince Charles, can be watched by clicking on this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_4S6K2m-s0&t=64s. The images below show the certificate awarded for the Industrial Evolution Garden, and Fen Jane in situ.
The images below show Giles Landscapes’ Newsletter’s coverage of the Sandringham Flower Show excitement, with photos (by permission of the EDP, run by the Archant Group) of the then Prince Charles and Camilla meeting our team.
