Talk:"Hardy Border Perennials* by Barry Gayton

Barry first started gardening at the age of seven and has never stopped. He came out of horticultural college with the award of best student and went on to become Propagation Gardener at St. Andrew’s Hospital in Norwich.

After his marriage in 1973 he became Head Gardener at King’s House Gardens in Thetford and during this time purchased his bungalow 81 Desert World Gardens where he started growing plants from seeds and cuttings. He won the trophy for Best Garden in East Anglia 1986 with this garden and went on to found the Thetford Branch of the British Cacti and Succulent Society.

His career took him into lecturing, appearances on TV and radio and writing many articles for several of the best known newspapers.

He has been a collection holder for many plant collections; his impressive list includes four hundred and eighty types of sempervivums, thirty cannas, one hundred and fifty ferns, forty plectranthus, fifty thousand cacti and succulents, over one thousand tropical plants, sixty passion flowers, one hundred and fifty primulas and auriculas plus thousands of herbaceous plants. In his ‘spare time’ Barry is a keen photographer of plants and has around sixty thousand slides (he won’t be showing all of them to us at this meeting!!!)

To say he is an enthusiast is putting it mildly - in his own words he ‘Eats, drinks and sleeps  plants’ so he should fit in well!!!