After dedicating 40 years of her life to Plant Heritage Guernsey, events organiser Tattie Thompson is stepping back.
The 89-year-old has been with the group since its very beginning in the mid-1980s, and has held various roles from events organiser to chairwoman. She has overseen the development of the Guernsey Nerine Festival, and has fostered good relationships with Sausmarez Manor to host popular fundraising plant sales.
Mrs Thompson was raised in the midlands, and though she says she always had an interest in gardening, she was more selective in what she enjoyed helping out with in her younger years.
‘During the war, my father was in the Navy and was away a lot. We went up to Rutland and lived there with my grandmother, and she bought a nursery garden next door, which had greenhouses and that sort of thing in it,’ she said.
‘There could be a sudden cry for something: “Oh, we want help with something”. I would find my sister and we’d run away like mad in order not to be made to work. We didn’t mind if we were picking raspberries or strawberries, they would be quite popular. But otherwise we would flee for the hills.’
But gardening and horticulture grew on her, and soon became her passion.
‘It’s just a compulsive thing and it’s a jolly good exercise as well. It makes you look around all the time. I’ve always been looking around and finding something new in my life.’
She has spent more than 60 years of her life in Guernsey, marrying Peter Dorey, who would go on to be the island’s senior politician and to co-found Condor Ferries, in 1959. He was sadly lost at sea during the 1979 Fastnet Race disaster. Years later, she married Don Thompson, and not too long after Plant Heritage came knocking looking for members.
She knew some of the founders, and they promptly invited her to join.
Since then, Mrs Thompson has worked to develop collections of the unique Guernsey irises and nerines, and built up various events to keep the organisation going through the decades.
‘We’ve done a number of open gardens in Guernsey. I used to open my garden because I have been involved quite a lot with the Forest floral team, and I raise money for them by having visitors,' she said.
‘I like to have about 30 visitors in. I will split them into two groups, one group will walk around the garden with me, and I’ll try and remember all the names of the plants – I can’t always quite remember all of them – while the other half will sit in my conservatory, and we’ll have a cup of coffee and some Guernsey gache – that goes down very well.
‘There’s a lot that we can do in the Channel Islands. We can grow some rather rare things. We grow a lot of plants from South Africa and from Madeira, Australia and all those sorts of places. I’ve got all sorts from all over the world growing here which people can’t grow in England because the climate is slightly different.’
She cannot do many open garden tours now due to her age, but her eyes are just as sharp.
‘It keeps your eye in to everything that is going in around you, and I always see something or other. When I had my cataracts done, I went for walk with my husband up the road, and I said: “I never knew that plant had stripes on it before”. You follow your eyes.’
She is comfortable with the direction Plant Heritage is going, and said she was happy to let the reins go.
‘I’m 89 now, and I think the time has come. Somebody else can do all the various things. It doesn’t stop me growing, though I could still provide them with plants for sale. Anything I want to do at all, I can. I’m just handing over.’
