Modern heroes of horticulture - Chris Young

At 16, confined by illness and having to attend the sixth form on a part time basis, Chris Young discovered his life's purpose between the rose bushes, natural history, and fruit trees of his family's garden.  What began as an unplanned retreat became a lifelong passion and with his  father, a civil engineer “using gardening as a complete antidote to his day job", Chris suspects, in retrospect, this was his motivation to head into horticulture - that and sibling rivalry, where as the youngest of four children and with all the sports such as lacrosse, golf and rugby already taken, Chris fell easily into the vacant gardening shaped hole.

With improved health, Chris went on to study landscape architecture at the University of Gloucestershire.  During his studies in Cheltenham he co-created a student newspaper called North Point.  A large poster-style publication furnished with articles, it was sent to all the Landscape Architecture colleges in the country. 

Despite initially seeing his future in landscape architecture, Chris found the industry rather slow-moving and headed straight from university into the exciting world of media.  After some freelance work with The Landscape Design Trust, cutting his teeth interviewing people like American landscape designer Martha Schwartz and Kathryn Gustafson, Chris became editor of the Garden Design Journal, a position he held for five years.

His next step took him to the Royal Horticultural Society where he became deputy editor of the RHS journal ‘The Garden’ and, towards the end of his sixteen year tenure, Head of Editorials.  During this time Chris wrote two books - ‘The RHS Encyclopaedia of Garden Design’ and ‘Take Chelsea Home’, a sourcebook highlighting the best garden design ideas from the past century and showing how to apply them in your own garden.

He decided to resign from his position at The RHS on the night of lockdown “which was not my best timing”  says Chris laughing.  That was March 2020 and his resignation was deferred until October 2020.  He then started at Dorling Kindersley as a consultant publisher, but continued for a further eighteen months at the RHS on a part time basis .  “I technically left in February 2022 but I stopped being editor of The Garden at the end of 2020.”

During lockdown Chris built his own swimming pond at home but without the huge budget commonly required for this type of project he freely admits “I hadn't done it properly, but for the first year, it was a proper swimming pond.  We swam in it every day, and it was lovely.”  Without filtration and a UV system Chris knew it wasn’t a textbook approach to construction  “but, if it all went wrong, then I just have a beautiful pond.” 

Chris now runs his own consultancy business  focusing on garden design, business development, and marketing strategies, and continues to carry out consulting work for companies like DK Books and nursery garden-store We Say Grow.  He is editor for the Westland newspaper and also mentors and coaches businesses in the gardening and design sector.  He sees his brain as split between creative design and business development.

Chris is upbeat about the horticulture sector within the media.  With several decades of experience in the world of publishing he reports that gardening content is becoming ever more attractive to book publishers.  When asked about emerging trends he says “The holy grail of book publishing is to try and find the people who need a book but don't know they need a book…we're always looking for those people who are pre- Gardeners World”

With a passion for telling stories about people and plants, Chris is currently writing for Scribehound the newly emerging online platform where a whole host of writers can be found with their work published in written and audio form.  He particularly enjoys hearing authors' voices and personal stories and his own writing covers practical garden design and observational writing.  His latest piece explains why you should always paint your shed black.  Intrigued? You’ll have to have a look. Visit www.scribehound.com

To find out more about Chris, head over to Instagram where he can be found as ‘seewhygarden’ and on threads as @seewhygarden.  You can also visit his website at www.cygardens.co.uk