It’s most likely you’ll know Dame Mary Berry for her cooking and baking endeavours, and the reflections she shares on marriage and family life.
However, alongside the passions she’s known for, Mary is also a keen gardener and has even written a book about it, My Gardening Life.
Sharing her thoughts on gardening in more detail, Mary says, “Gardening is all about waiting. Cooking is instant.” With gardening, “You have to plan, you have to wait for the carrot.”
She continues, “Gardening is long-term. It’s like mediation, I suppose. You have to think about it and plan.”
“My gardening is all about what I have learned – I’m still learning – and my mistakes.”
Mary also expresses an interest in the “trendiness” of vegetables. She’s previously spoken out about her vehement dislike of kale, hilariously banning it from her diet and “golden rules” when it comes to staying healthy.
In conversation with Cressida Bonas and Isabella Branson during an episode of their Mothers podcast, Mary once said, “I don’t go with the trends. I’ll promote cabbage or watercress and all those sort of things. I’m not a huge lover of kale. I used to give that to my pony!”
Once again bringing home her dislike of the so-called superfood, Mary tells the Irish Independent, “Yes, everybody loves kale now, but it’s not one of my favourite vegetables at all.”
She explains that when you can easily get “perfect” cabbage with a knob of butter and some pepper, this begs the question, “why would I want kale?”
(Image credit: Neil Spence/Alamy)
Still ruminating on kale, Mary continues, “Kale is like a new vegetable, it’s a bit like a sprout. It grows like a sprout, a bit open. I can remember when nobody had butternut squash, I love butternut squash. It’s inexpensive, easy to grow and easy to cook.”
Mary also recalls that her “first commercial business” at the age of nine, involved gardening and flowers.
When her parents left her alone in the house at this age, she picked flowers from her garden and left them at the gate “for people to admire.”
This led to her adding prices to them, eventually making a little money from people buying them on their way past.
However, her parents were cross and “I got a good ticking off,” Mary remembers. Her first foray into business and flower selling ended with her parents forcing her to donate her profits to their neighbour across the road who worked for the Red Cross.
