The autobiographical gardens of 'chicken boy' Arthur Parkinson

During what seems an interminable wait for spring, we travel to Nottingham to meet the writer and gardener Arthur Parkinson, one of the most influential young gardeners in the UK. Our host, Francine Raymond, has known Arthur since he wrote to me as a small boy, and they've kept in touch because of their mutual love of hens. For our fifth episode of the How My Garden Grows podcast, Arthur shows us around three gardens that have been pivotal to his love of nature, hens and gardens. “I come from a world of small urban gardens,” he tells us as we stand in his mum’s tiny front garden, crammed full of pots filled with bulbs just beginning to flower under their squirrel protection. It’s precisely here – at home with his mum and brother, being allowed to forage, harvest and play unhindered in this plot – that his path was set.