Andy Willoughby is stepping down as head gardener after more than fifteen years creating the spectacular gardens at Arnold Circus on the Boundary Estate. The Friends of Arnold Circus are seeking a replacement. Click here for details

Andy Willoughby

Over recent years, I have always made the detour up the steps through the park whenever I walk through Arnold Circus, in order to admire the planting. I like to see the native flowers on the slopes here, especially the bluebells, cowslips and foxgloves that combine with the tall trees arching overhead and the ivy garlanding the ironwork to create the effect of a piece of woodland transported to the city.

Most intriguing is the inclusion of non-native species, particularly a fine range of diverse hellebores, which complete the planting in a garden alive with detail at every season of the year – clearly the product of a sophisticated horticultural sensibility. So it was a pleasure to meet Andy Willoughby, the shrewd gardener responsible for the lyrical planting that has enriched this corner of the neighbourhood so attractively.

When we shook hands in Arnold Circus, I immediately noticed Andy’s intense steel-blue eyes, trademark guernsey sweater and direct manner, which is disarming at first because he requires you to connect with him at the same level of open-ness that he shows to you, but which quickly establishes a mutual understanding that allows an ease of discourse without requirement for small talk. The latter is especially useful when there is a job of work to be done and permits dialogue to be restricted to, “Are you warm enough?”, “Take this coat”, “Pass me the fork” and “Hold this bag.”

It is impossible not to respect the strength of character and physical constitution of a man who works fifty to sixty-hour weeks in all weathers outdoors from Easter to Christmas, and keeps very busy with other tasks in between.

“About twenty-five years ago, I was at a bit of a loose end,” revealed Andy quietly, as he worked, introducing his brief account of how gardening came to take over his life. At first, he did grounds maintenance work and cut lawns, but then a job gardening at a hospice for the terminally ill offered the chance to show more creativity. “I learnt most at St Joseph’s Hospice – they liked to keep everything neat and tidy. A friend was a gardener there, so I worked with her and took over when she went on maternity leave. I have no qualifications as a gardener, I learnt from observation – and, by looking up in books, I learnt how things grow.” Andy told me.

Nowadays, as well as his duties at Arnold Circus, Andy gardens at couple of schools, Blue Gate Fields in Cable St, Bangabandhu in Bethnal Green, plus at children’s nurseries, George Green on the Isle of Dogs and Harry Roberts in Stepney, as well Lady Mico’s Almshouses in Stepney and another senior nursing home in Rotherhithe. Andy spoke passionately of his work with children, “They come and help, because they see me doing the work and I explain to them what I do. It is very important that children get an education in plants, otherwise they trample them without knowing what they are doing,” adding, “My mother had a garden and she liked plants,” in explanation of his earliest education in horticulture and revealing the origin of his own green fingers.

It is apparent that Andy loves gardening, derives fulfilment from it and is held in great esteem too. So I was completely astonished when, as we said our goodbyes, he casually revealed all his other previous jobs and accomplishments that filled his life before he arrived at that loose end fifteen years ago – including being a trained nurse, a Buddhist monk, a qualified carpenter and joiner, a bricklayer, a musical instrument-maker specialising in early woodwind, a dustman, a bicycle courier and a skilled rock climber and mountaineer who scaled peaks in the Rockies, the Cascades and the Alps. Travelling widely, Andy was the last European to catch smallpox in India before it was eradicated  forty-five years ago and has the scars to prove it, when I had merely assumed that his ruddy complexion was the result of years weeding in East London.

Now I understood something of the source of the natural authority that Andy possesses and his insight that sees right through you. I recognised that he carries a wealth of experience which he chooses not to tell, and I was fascinated  that gardening brought him into contact with people at all stages of life, from the youngest children at nursery school to senior nursing homes and the dying. Although into his seventies now, I have never met anyone more vitally and physically present in their body than Andy Willoughby, who after experiencing a great deal of life has discovered happiness in cultivating plants.