Gardening guru gets grand welcome (From Burnham & Highbridge Weekly News)

Gardening guru gets grand welcome

10:02am Tuesday 13th March 2007

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BBC gardening personality Tom Hart Dyke visited Brent Knoll last Friday (March 9) to host an afternoon talk to tie in with the launch of his new TV series.

Tom, who is the star of BBC2's Return to Lullingstone Castle, was at Sanders GardenWorld to host a talk entitled World Map of Plants.

The experienced gardener first hit the headlines in 2000 when he was kidnapped and held hostage for nine months in the jungles of Colombia after a plant hunt went disastrously wrong.

Tom had been searching for orchids in the remote Darien Gap in Panama, South America.

After his release from captivity, Tom returned to his ancestral home of Lullingstone Castle in Kent where he set about creating something positive from his jungle experience and designed the UK's first ever World Garden of Plants.

Tom's garden, which is laid out in the shape of the map of the world, was a bold initiative to bring visitors back to his family castle, which was in decline.

His fight to create the World Garden of Plants at Lullingstone Castle and raise funds to keep the stately home open was made into a BBC TV series, which airs from next Monday (March 19).

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