RICHARD AYRES

I LOVED EVERYTHING ABOUT IT - I WANTED TO KNOW PLANTS’ NAMES AND WHY THEY GREW WHERE THEY DID

When he left school at 16, gardener’s son Richard Ayres went and joined the Navy. “I was sick to the back teeth of gardening,” he says. “I wanted to do something totally different. But my eyesight wasn’t good enough and, after a year, they got rid of me.”

Instead of a life below decks as a cook, Richard returned to Cambridgeshire and worked as a fenland