A Bit About Me and Other Waffle

-1. Why were you so into gardening from such a young age?

o Growing up in Sharjah was not the typical childhood of a comparative kid back in the UK. There was no English language TV channels, no high-speed Internet or game consoles. Not even a tarmac road to our house, or even neighbours (unless you count the marshes and sand dunes of course). And so without the aforementioned distractions, you relied that much more upon your imagination and creativity, and I guess I found that in gardening.

o Growing up in one of the most arid environments, one tends to notice gardens. They stand out in dramatic contrast to the desert around you. Patches of grass, trees and flowers were not the norm, there were no green hills, babbling brooks, or forested glades gently rolling off into the horizon.

o As a young kid, seeing people create ‘greenery’/oasis from literally nothing was as close to magic as I’ve ever seen. The gardeners were magicians; they created life where there previously had been nothing, not even a blade of grass, just inhospitable burning sand.

o Things grow quickly out there, and the same is true for the plants. Flowers quickly bloom, trees rapidly mature and wildlife flock in their thousands to these burgeoning man-made oasis in the desert. And so as a kid I could see my creations develop at a rate that a temperate English garden could never match in a decade. That gave me the opportunity to learn that bit faster what worked, and what did not. How things looked at the start, and how they looked once they had matured.

-2. You studied what seems like a completely different subject at University – how did you continue to develop your passion and knowledge of gardens and wildlife?

o Living in London gave me an added appreciation for space. My green space was in the form of a 10ft balcony, and to say I went to town on it would be the understatement of the century. Like a true middle easterner, I started to methodically (and at times erratically) fill up every single foot of space available, with just enough room for me to water and mist them, not so much by way of a path, more like stepping stones amongst a lush green river.

o My partner, Lebanese but with a much more minimalistic design attitude to myself soon put pay to my jungle and a compromise was reached. As hard as it was to give away plants to friends, it did give me an added appreciation for the need to plan. Small spaces need much more meticulous planning than larger ones, a theme is needed, eventual plant sizes need to be taken into account (vertical as well as horizontal) and no plant (unless truly spectacular) can afford to have only one dimension to them (by that I mean having some other purpose as well as just looking good)

- Many people seem to ask after what they see as the polar opposites of politics and history, and gardening but in my eyes, this simply is not the case. Politics and history are as intertwined with horticulture and nature as anything else, perhaps more so. We owe our very sedentary existence to gardening; there would be no houses, no cities no nation-states without them. From William the Conqueror, Queen Victoria, William Gladstone, and the Sun King himself, Heads of state and political leaders have always been intertwined with gardening and the landscape, whether that be for vanity projects or ‘Dig for Victory’ policies for survival.

- The Gardens of Versailles, Chequers, Camp David and Palm Springs have all played vital roles for making ground-breaking treaties and deals that have shaped the modern world.

- Regardless of the Machiavellian politics and the minutiae of punctuation and language used in treaties, people are still people at the end of the day and are influenced as much by rational thought as by nature and the environment around them. Politicians are not unaware of the fact that a garden can calm the incendiary language of two violently opposed leaders, for example, putting them at greater ease in a garden setting and making them calmer and crucially more acquiescent to the host's aims and goals.

- 3. What is your favourite plant and why?

o Tough question and one I think few gardeners can answer concisely. Skirting around the question, I would say that my favourite aspect of plants is probably their structure. Being the son of an engineer, I am drawn to the structure, both it's aesthetic and the mechanics by which it stands up. From the cacti and succulents, I grew as a kid (and still grow today) to the great beech and oak trees starkly distinct in the Cumbrian winter, they are to me a sort of living architecture, an ever-changing sculpture, the towers and skyscrapers of the natural world.

- 4. Who has contributed to your passion for gardening?

o I think this can be a ‘who’ and ‘what’

o Gardening has always been in the family genes. My Grandmas and Aunt over in the UK, and especially my mother when I was growing up in Sharjah.

o My family’s Gardeners Mr Mansour Ali, and his Nephew Mr Rashid Ali have had an enormous impact upon both my passion for gardening and the vast intuitive horticultural knowledge they imparted and still impart to me.

o The culture of the Middle East to gardening has, as I have mentioned, had a deep impact upon me in osmosis like fashion.

o The aridity of the environments that I grew up in and the severe lack of resources available has had a great impact upon me in terms of my view to gardening sustainably and with a principle focus on both the environment and how we interact with nature.

- 5. Why Sedbergh Landscaping Company and why now?

o The yearning I had and have for nature has always been there as a boy and has never left. During my studying in London, I always had one eye on gardening. Although immodestly or not, as gifted as I am in studying and research, the thought of a being locked to a desk job with a ball and chain until I retire (probably at the age of 90 as things are going) frightens the life out of me.

o People today have incredibly busy work lives, something that has always been the case of course, but productivity levels are decreasing and mental health issues are on the rise. Now one can point to any number of factors, be they economic, or educational but in my opinion, it is more simple than that. We have never been less connected to the natural world as we are now, and like it or not we are part of this world, and it is something that is intrinsically built into our species. We need nature a lot more than it needs us, both to tackle climate change and for our own mental wellbeing.

o I passionately feel that through landscape design that is focused upon enhancing nature and encouraging human interaction with it, we can change the path we are currently going down and reconnect people and societies with each other and with nature.

o We are at a junction as a society. With near-apocalyptic size wildfires in Australia, plagues of locusts in Eastern Africa, and year-long droughts in the Sahil Belt and California (amongst others) and with 4, 100-year event storms in England in the last 20 years, we can no longer deny that 'Climate Change' exists and that we have been and are currently a negative factor upon both the climate and the natural world, but it doesn’t have to be like this.

o Never has Climate change been so prominent in politics and the media.

o Gardens make up more land per acre than the Norfolk Broads, and the Exmoor, Dartmoor and Lake District National Parks added together, so the potential national significance of gardens as a resource for wildlife is clear and profound, and crucially something the individual has near-total control over. Ergo there is no excuse for not doing your bit.

Jonathan with his mentor, garden guru Mr Ali Rashid