UK: Ralph Hoare, the 101-year-old gardener

. LONDON, England / The Guardian / Life & Style / Gardens / July 31, 2009 Lia Leendertz meets Ralph Hoare, a centenarian who is still playing the piano, practising his golf swing and, above all, growing beautiful roses By Lia Leendertz, Mustafa Khalili and Michael Tait guardian.co.uk Mr Hoare sitting in his delightful garden. Link to this video My very first proper paid job in horticulture was as a plant assistant at a well-known garden centre chain. There were several of us working the plant area, including a manager who knew, if it were possible, even less than me, a man in his 60s and a woman in her 50s, both keen gardeners. Shortly after I arrived the man was inexplicably moved to lawnmowers and the company cut the woman's pay so she was forced to get another job elsewhere. The manager (who gave me a rise at the same time) told me without a trace of embarrassment that they wanted the plant area (they may even have started calling it the 'Plantaria' at that stage) to be young and fresh, and that meant hiring the likes of me. Me, with all the vast horticultural knowledge that nine months' worth of National Certificate in Horticulture bestows, who regularly hid in the rhododendron section so that no one would ask me a question, and ran to Trevor in lawnmowers every time a customer managed to find me and ask me one. So it dawned on me early on just how ludicrous the fetishisation of young people in gardening is. We are all obsessed with getting youth interested in gardening. They're not. Old people are. What on earth is wrong with that? Gardening is just one of the many things that you get better and better at as you get older. Which is why it was such a joy to go and interview, for my very first video moment, Ralph Hoare. Ralph is the grandfather of a friend of mine, and he turned 101 two weeks ago, just before our visit. Unlike me, he is an old hand at all this filming, having done several interviews for various news programmes last year. But only the Guardian cares when you're 101. He still does all his own gardening, bar the lawn, which he has had someone in to help him with for the past two years. Just to underline that point, this means he continued to regularly mow the lawn until he was 99 years old. Feeling lazy yet? The object of making the film was really to ask the question: why do we garden? What is it in our pasts that drives us to sow and weed and mow? As well as accessing his vast store of horticultural knowledge, we wanted to delve into Ralph's memories, to get a feel for the way gardening has changed over the past century, and to simply celebrate Ralph, a really quite old gardener. I hope you enjoy it. [rc] © Guardian News and Media Limited 2009