From asylum seeker to superstar gardener

Everybody is a gardener in Zimbabwe. Kitchen gardening is a way of life. People grow crops to feed their families, and sell the excess at the market, transporting tomatoes, bananas, groundnuts and other crops by donkey cart in big African baskets.

I have gardened since I could hold a hoe, and my father taught me how to grow vegetables. I remember certain things from when I was young as it was around me all the time, but I didn’t like it and would rather have played football. Now kitchen gardening is my passion.

Journeying to England

After school I went straight into the army and spent four years as an infantryman and musician playing the trumpet. When I came to England on holiday to see my sister who lived in Luton, I was told that if I returned to Zimbabwe I’d be arrested at the airport as my trip had not been approved, so I became a refugee.

I could not work, so spent much of my time working on my sister’s garden. I had never grown things in such wet cold soil and was caught by surprise one day when all my lettuces were frozen. My cousin said ‘I told you to cover these, this is not Zimbabwe!’ – it was a big eye-opener. I decided I had much to learn about gardening in Europe.

After seven long years waiting to gain asylum, I moved to Leicester and started work for the City Council. There was garden library in an Eco-House at a local park, so I borrowed new books each week to learn about the crops and what would grow on my new allotment. I relied on Dr Hessayon’s books and bought Charles Dowding’s

This generally means gardening without manufactured chemical substances, such as synthetic pesticides, weedkillers and fertilisers. Instead, naturally derived, non-chemical, environmentally friendly products and methods are used to feed the soil and tend plants, with the aim of creating a healthy, diverse and balanced ecosystem.

, which became was my ‘bible’ and I went on some ‘Master Gardeners’ programmes provided by Garden Organic in my free time, too.

Gardening for wellbeing

As time passed, people began noticing my allotment and my sister’s garden, so they knew how passionate I was and what I could do. A friend suggested I enroll on the Extended Diploma in Horticulture at Moulton College in Northamptonshire, where I learned to use a computer (in Zimbabwe it was pencil and paper), as well as all kinds of horticultural things, from surveying to plant science, integrated pest management, greenhouse production, fruit and vegetable culture, identification and Latin names. I have never had such an experience in terms of education, and felt empowered. If you have this knowledge, you can grow crops anywhere – if they had this in Zimbabwe, they could feed the whole country.

I went to Leicester University, doing garden maintenance then moved to a similar job at Loughborough University where I had done a college placement. On finishing, I called Leicester University who offered me a short-term contract so I worked on their sports pitches but was seconded to Leicester University Botanic Garden, caring for plants in the greenhouses, borders and herb garden.

Finding the perfect job

I later realised that herbs and veg are my thing, and wanted to give something back to horticulture. When I saw the job advertisement for Assistant Kitchen Gardener at Tottenham Hotspur Football club online, it jumped out at me from the screen. I went for the interview and was delighted to be offered the job.

The Head Kitchen Gardener at the time was a highly skilled Italian guy, who was also a keen cook and I learned a lot from his organic Italian style. When he retired in 2018 I took over as Head Kitchen Gardener. I love that I am able to garden sustainably and efficiently, knowing that the kitchen needs to feed 58–70 people and growing the right amount of food accordingly. Nothing I grow is wasted. I think of myself as being part of a chain – the chef and I are friends and work together, deciding together what we should grow.

I like to share what I have learnt and have students coming in to the garden where I demonstrate things such as seed sowing and other practical gardening tasks. I like everyone in the community to have the chance to learn how to grow their own food to make them more healthy and environmentally responsible.

We grow lots of fruit here – alongside white, red and blackcurrants there are gooseberries and dessert pears too. There’s an orchard dedicated to apples, most on dwarfing rootstocks, where I’ll be adding more disease-resistant cultivars this winter. Stone fruit like cherries and plums are going to be grown at the end of the kitchen, trained as fans and cordons. In the long term I would like to be more adventurous too, and try growing more tender plants such as pomegranates – perhaps in pots so they can be put outdoors in summer and brought under cover for the colder winters.

Growing veg for the love of it

I run the kitchen garden using ‘no-dig’ principles – the main beds are enriched annually in winter with a mulch

Mulch is a layer of material, at least 5cm (2in) thick, applied to the soil surface in late autumn to late winter (Nov-Feb). It is used to provide frost protection, improve plant growth by adding nutrients or increasing organic matter content, reducing water loss from the soil, for decorative purposes and suppressing weeds. Examples include well-rotted garden compost and manure, chipped bark, gravel, grit and slate chippings.

of well-rotted organic matter, which is covered with recycled landscape fabric. On a clear frosty day when the sun starts to shine the rays are absorbed by the black fabric, raising the temperature high enough to kill many of the weed seeds and speed the breakdown of the organic matter. The worms do the work of incorporating the lower layer of organic matter into the clay soil, and the surface is ideal for seed sowing. Once the plants mature their roots go down into the nutrient-rich and moisture retentive clay, so they’re very happy.

We try to use six or seven different kinds of leaf to make salads more exciting, supplying the kitchen with all they need, year round. An example is chickweed, tree spinach, ‘ cut and come again

A method of harvesting leafy crops so the plants continue to grow and sprout further leaves, providing several pickings over a long period. Snip off just a few outer leaves from each plant, rather than all of them, leaving the inner leaves to grow, for picking in a few weeks. Suitable candidates include lettuces and most types of salad leaves, as well as chard, spinach, mizuna and kale.

’ chard, mizuna, mustard, pea shoots, kale, nasturtium flowers for colour. I think that the commercialisation of food means we have lost our knowledge of edible indigenous plants, such as borage, whose young leaves taste of cucumber and is a rich source of gamma-linoleic acid and of greater value than many of the crops we eat day in, day out.

Year-round goodness

To me, our kitchen garden is a food bank and a place of experimentation, I was the first to grow sweet potatoes and would like to work with the chef and try new crops such as fenugreek; my latest passions are Oriental vegetables including pak choi and mizuna greens as they are winter hardy. We are here to provide a service and I want to improve all of the time in the quality of the produce I grow and in terms of sustainability. Everything is done to the highest possible standard.

This page is an adaptation of an article which was published in the November 2021 edition of The Gardenmagazine, free to RHS members every month when you join the RHS.

Grow your own fruit & veg