Michael Heseltine: ‘I always believed that if I had a garden I would never be alone’

Where do you live?

My wife, Anne, and I have lived at Thenford since 1976. It’s nestled in the Northamptonshire countryside, not far from Banbury, and as soon as we set eyes on the house and its gardens, we knew it was what we’d been looking for.

At the time, I was the Conservative MP for Henley, so it was within easy reach of my constituency and about 30 miles north of Oxford. The house was built in 1765 in a classical Georgian style, and came with a walled garden and a rose garden. The rest of the estate stretches over 1,400 acres and includes farmland and woodland. This was then bought by my company, Haymarket, which already had serious horticultural and farming interests.

What are some of the projects you’ve undertaken at Thenford?

Some 20-odd years ago, one of our main projects was to restore the walled garden, which covers two acres and is 200yd east of the house. We were inspired by many gardens, such as Villandry in the Loire Valley, and decided it would be primarily ornamental, with spring and summer beds for flowers such as tulips and peonies.

It also has a herb garden, a fruit cage, an Alitex greenhouse, a large aviary for our parakeets, and vegetable beds enclosed with stepover apple trees – which, as the name suggests, are so small you can step over them. Then, we extended the rose garden, which is filled with white roses, including Rosa ‘Madame Alfred Carriére’, Rosa rugosa ‘Alba’, and Rosa ‘Dupontii’.

You also have an arboretum. How did this come about?

When we were looking for somewhere to live, we never anticipated looking out onto woodland, which now forms a 25-acre horseshoe around the house.

At the time, however, it was in a bad way. So in 1978 we invited Sir Harold Hillier, an outstanding horticulturalist, to advise us. He came up with a list of trees, including chestnuts, oaks and hornbeams. Sir Roy Lancaster, another great plantsman, then helped us to lay them out. Unwittingly, they became the foundations for our collection, which has more than 4,000 trees and shrubs.

Do you have any favourite trees and plants?

Every season brings so many wonderful things, it’s impossible to choose. In the spring, it would have to include the magnolias, particularly Felix Jury and M. wilsonii – two of the 300 different varieties we have. In summer, it would be one of the dogwoods, Cornus ‘Eddie’s White Wonder’; and in autumn, I love the maple, Acer pseudosieboldianum.

In winter, there’s the witch hazel, Hamamelis x intermedia ‘Strawberries and Cream’. At this time of the year, I also love the dramatic red stems of the Cornus alba and our snowdrop displays, which start in November and last until  March. We have more than 900 varieties so it really is a glorious sight.

Have you ever commemorated anyone with a tree?

Some time ago, we started planting trees to commemorate the people who came to visit us, including former Conservative prime ministers. We planted a conifer, Pinus x densithunbergii, to mark Ted Heath’s visit in 1992 and a pumpkin ash, Fraxinus profunda, to mark John Major’s in 1993.

And during her time as prime minister, Mrs Thatcher allowed me to take cuttings of the Buxus sempervirens, better known as the box shrub, at Chequers. I actually sought her agreement to do this while we were on a plane going to see US president Ronald Reagan. I’m not altogether sure she knew exactly what I was talking about, but I did it anyway.

Did the garden provide a therapeutic oasis during the tougher times in your career?

I realised how therapeutic gardening could be quite early on in life. Even before I got into politics, I was building up a business and, as any entrepreneur knows, there are good moments and there are bad moments. I set up Haymarket in 1957, but in the 1960s, we hit a few bad ones when three of the businesses got into trouble.

At the time, I was renting a cottage in the country and all I can say is that getting to sleep was much aided by an axe. In the evenings, I would pick it up, take it into the garden and hack away at any diseased wood I could find. I became an MP in 1966 and got my first Cabinet post in 1979. The pressure of a minister’s life is relentless, but I’d step into the garden here and leave all the pressures, problems and anxieties behind. My wife would say it kept me sane.

Did you have a garden as a child?

When my father came back from the war, he bought a house with a two-acre garden in the suburbs of Swansea. It had gone to pot, so he brought it back to life and grew vegetables. My sister, Yvonne, and I would always help him. My mother, on the other hand, loved delphiniums and lupins.

Then, when I was nine, I went to Broughton Hall, a boarding school in Staffordshire, where the headmaster gave each new boy a square yard of mud and a pack of Virginia stock seeds. I meticulously covered my square and six weeks later, my patch was full of flowers. I was hooked.

Are there areas of gardening you particularly enjoy?

Planting seeds. By late autumn, I’ll have collected lots of our own seeds from shrubs and trees; I’m also given plenty by friends. Last autumn I acquired everything from cyclamen and spindle berry to oak.

We have a wonderful greenhouse which, during winter and spring, I’m in and out of all the time preparing seeds for germination. The wait then begins for those first signs of life, followed by that most delicate of tasks: gently lifting out each new seedling to pot on. I find all these tiny activities so satisfying.

Is there something in the garden you wouldn’t be without?

My Club Car buggy. I got it after I had my heart attack in 1993 and I’ve had the same one for 30 years – I recently got Anne one, too. It’s invaluable for getting around the rest of the estate which, as well as the arboretum, includes three large lakes.

Over the years, we’ve also added many new features, such as a 100m rill, a trough garden, winding waterside paths and drives, and the sculpture garden, which includes works by Elisabeth Frink and Ronald Rae. It also includes a huge head of Lenin that once stood on the roof of the KGB’s HQ in Latvia.

What does the garden mean to you?

Sometimes, it will cross my mind that as you get older, your friends become fewer and fewer, not because you’ve quarrelled with them, but because the good Lord takes his toll. I always believed that having a garden would make sure I was never alone… never lonely.

And it’s true, with a garden you never are. Gardening is something I like to do, I want to do, and I have always done. The truth is, I simply cannot conceive of life without it.

Thenford: The Creation of an English Garden by Anne and Michael Heseltine is published by Head of Zeus