Kate Garraway has revealed how gardening has helped her cope with her husband’s fight against coronavirus and its after-effects.
The presenter, 53, explained how her green space had become an area of solace for her, after Derek Draper, also 53, was put in an induced coma after being admitted to hospital seven months ago suffering with coronavirus. He has since tested negative but has only regained a low level of consciousness.
Garraway has since said she has found planting bulbs, alongside her two children Darcy and Billy, have helped her find a new sense of hope.
Speaking on BBC Two’s Gardeners' World, she said: “It was rather sad because the radishes came, they’re one of Derek’s favourite vegetables, and we ate them and he still wasn’t better.
“So I then thought, we’ve got to go more long-term, planting things that were going to take longer to bear fruit.
“And I’d say, ‘Dad will be better by then’… And of course now that it’s been so long, we’ve got a huge basket of bulbs, so that when dad comes home, the place will be full of colour.”
In the programme that will air tonight, Garraway continued that she has found joy going into her garden, having helped her in a difficult situation.
“When you’re living day-to-day on a knife edge, doing something that gives you a future just helps with a sense of progress, where there is actually none from the direct situation,” she said
“It’s been the most important space for us. It’s been a place to find joy, hope, go a bit crazy and feel a bit unleashed in a stifling physical and emotional time that we’ve all lived through.
“It just gives you that sense of positive moving forward. You can’t think short-term in a garden, you have to plan. You have to have hope. You have to invest in a future.
“You don’t plant something unless you believe it’s going to come up, so by planting something and believing Derek will see it when it comes up, that gives us a sense of future.”
The Good Morning Britain anchor added that she often used Derek as a backdrop as she FaceTimed him from home.
“I’d sit in the garden and do that and talk about the things that he loved. It’s a lovely thing to do,” she said.
“It’s obviously been an odd year for the world, and very directly, personally for me.”
Garraway returned to work in July having had three months off to look after her children when Draper, a former Labour lobbyist, was first admitted.
He is currently the UK’s longest-serving hospital patient while battling coronavirus.
Gardeners’ World is broadcast on Friday at 9pm on BBC Two
Additional reporting by PA
