My interest in gardens was always there. There’s some home-movie footage of me clipping a hedge, aged three. I remember picking peas, as a child, and shelling them before Sunday lunch.
I went to Jamaica when I was 17, to see my dad and to visit the village where I was conceived. As the descendant of slaves, Dad had a smallholding. When the slaves were liberated in the 1830s they had no alternative but to live off the land.
My garden is the result of many influences; my foster parents and foster sister, my slave ancestry, and my travels as a broadcaster and journalist. There was a particularly rich period when I filmed abroad for the BBC’s Chelsea flower show coverage. I brought back so many plants, in my mind at least. The Cotinus coggygria was part of a BBC stand and given to me at the end of shooting. The space has a touch of cottage garden, some prairie planting and more than a dash of hot Jamaican colour. You pick up odd things, which help fill the garden in winter. The Victorian roller was my foster mum’s.
I have got that very English thing of a herbaceous border running down each side. Hidden among the flowers are edible crops; chard, chives, leeks and garlic. A lawn to a garden is as a frame to a picture, and especially important in winter, although mine is shrinking each year as the borders get wider.
When I first went to Great Dixter many years ago I was very pleased to find I had more pots than Christopher Lloyd had outside his front door. The pots are like players on a stage, and I bring them to the fore when they are at their most interesting.
I think one’s personality changes in a garden. I’ve been told I am at my happiest then, and I often find myself gardening after dusk.
London is an amazingly green city, and we must keep that. As a member of the Royal Parks board I am involved with the restoration of Brompton Cemetery. I grow Anemone hupehensis here; it is a plant introduced by the great plant hunter Robert Fortune, who is buried there, so we are keen to include it in the new scheme.
My favourite spot
All of it. I move around – in the summer my social life is in the garden.
• Wesley Kerr will give the EA Bowles Society lecture, The Glory Of The Garden: Living Heritage, at 3pm on Saturday 17 October at the Charis Centre, Jesus Church, Forty Hill, Enfield.
How does your garden grow? Email space@theguardian.com
