Eastern Kentucky native competes for ‘Garden of the Year’ on British TV show
Mike Robinson is a “keen gardener” whose garden in Great Britain can compete with the best of them, but he said he got his “green fingers” from his Kentucky roots.
Robinson grew up in Floyd County but has been living in Great Britain since about 2000. His garden is featured on a new British television series, “Garden of the Year,” which takes viewers inside some of the most beautiful gardens in the United Kingdom, where a team of judges will score them. The top garden from each region will then vie for the “Garden of the Year” title in the finale.
“Gardening commands a near-religious reverence in Great Britain,” Robinson wrote in an email. He said even being chosen to participate in the show is ”nothing short of a minor miracle for a poor boy from Eastern Kentucky.”
Robinson said his upbringing in the Katy Friend area of Floyd County had a heavy influence on the design and planting elements in his garden.
“I built a fair number of structures,” he said, including a veranda, treehouse and bridge.
Robinson and his wife, Dr. Frances Hall, live in Somersham, a village north of Cambridge. Their home sits next to a 13th century church, which Robinson said provides a pretty backdrop.
“We’ve got a fairly good size garden for this country, and over the years it’s grown,” he said.
Robinson said their garden, Twin Tarns, encompasses about an acre and includes both formal and informal sections, ponds, a wildflower meadow and a kitchen garden where he grows vegetables and fruits including apples, pears and plums.
Robinson, 57, who is retired from a career in technology, has done most of the labor himself, starting from scratch in a field where horse paddocks had been before they bought the property.
“It gave me a blank canvas to work with,” he said.
Growing up in the mountains, Robinson said his family, like most of that time period, lived a self-sufficient lifestyle, growing their own fruits and vegetables, collecting eggs from their chickens and milking their own cows.
“We lived on a small holding in a hollow, or a holler,” he said. “They had to have green fingers to grow their own food.”
They also made their own furniture.
“That has really influenced how I use things and reuse things,” he said.
Last year, the National Garden Scheme tweeted a photo of a gate made from shovels at Twin Tarns, saying “the garden is full of fantastic ideas for recycling.”
Twin Tarns has been featured in a number of gardening magazines and on television shows including “Love Your Garden” and BBC’s “Gardeners’ World.”
Each year, Robinson and Hall also open it to the public for charity fundraising through the National Garden Scheme.
But Robinson said “Garden of the Year” might be their biggest exposure yet.
The show is hosted by Zoe Ball, who Robinson described as “like Simon Cowell, except a lot nicer.”
“She’s a lovely lady,” he said.
The six-part series began airing on the British television channel More4 Aug. 22, and Robinson said Twin Tarns was featured on the Aug. 24 episode. The series is not available for streaming in the U.S., a spokesperson said.
Robinson is proud just to be included.
“This is a nation of gardeners,” Robinson said. “It’s not an easy thing ... to be able to compete with these guys.”
Robinson may be a Kentucky boy, but after years across the pond, his accent sounds more British than Eastern Kentucky. When he comes home for a visit, he said people at the petrol, er, gas station, sometimes ask where he’s from. “Just a few miles up the road,” he tells them.
He said his family still lives in the area. His sister, Mary Robinson Francis, is a real estate agent in Lexington.
After graduating from Prestonsburg High School, Robinson attended Eastern Kentucky University and then went on to serve in the Army, where he worked in satellite communications repair, before embarking on a career in high tech.
He met Hall while working in California as a defense contractor for Lockheed Martin in the late 90s. At the time, she was doing post-doctoral work at Stanford University.
He said she convinced him to move overseas by promising that the weather in the UK “was just like California.” Robinson joked that he’s since forgiven her for that.
Robinson said he loves gardening first and foremost because “it lends itself to a healthy lifestyle.”
Aside from the benefits of physical activity, he said, “It’s good for your mental health. It’s a calming thing to do.”
Gardening, he said, is “a nice gentle thing to do.”
