How it all began
Richard’s lifelong love of plants and gardening has taken him across all areas of the industry, giving him a unique depth of horticultural knowledge and experience.
About Richard Jackson
Richard’s lifelong love of plants and gardening has taken him across all areas of the industry and given him a unique depth of horticultural knowledge and experience. After graduating from Southampton University with a BSc in Biology he joined Hilliers and gained his real passion for plants inspired by their wonderful plantsmen, Roy Lancaster, then curator of the Hillier Arboretum.
Richard moved to Fisons and then on to Notcutts, where he broadened his product and marketing skills, and sparked an interest in garden retail which led to his to setting up, with Adam Caplin, Camden Garden Centre – an award-winning, self-financing employment & training project for long-term unemployed young people sponsored by the Fairbridge Society and afterwards a group of small but innovative garden centres in and around London at Alexandra Palace, Fulham Palace, Morden Hall & Hounslow.
Richard’s broadcasting career began in the 80’s with Pete Murray on LBC and a monthly gardening phone-in on the Michael Aspel show on Capitol Radio. His first TV appearances were on ‘Going Live’ with Philip Schofield where he devised fun gardening ideas for children including Gordon the Gopher’s garden!
Following the sale of the garden centres, his media career was firmly established in the 90’s. As a freelance writer & broadcaster he wrote for the Radio Times, the Telegraph, BBC Gardener’s World magazine and organised BBC Gardener’s World Road Shows. He was the gardening correspondent for News of the World and was was for 10 years the presenter of Meridian TV’s ‘Grass Roots’. He has written several gardening books, including his Container Gardening book which was amongst the Times best-selling gardening books in 2013.
In 1994, he became the gardening expert on QVC the UK’s leading shopping channel. He launched both the sale of plants on the channel and in 2007 ‘Flower Power’, his premium plant fertiliser, now expanded to a full range of ‘Flower Power’ garden products. Richard is particularly proud of the fact that many QVC gardeners tried gardening for the first time, and say they developed their interest in gardening, by watching and building confidence through his programmes & on-air advice.
A passionate promoter & supporter of the gardening industry, Richard founded Greenfingers charity in 1998 to bring people from across the industry together to focus fundraising and build gardens for children’s hospices with over 50 gardens completed to date. In 2006 he also led the set up of the annual Garden Press event to promote garden product & manufacturer interests to the gardening media.
Richard is doubly honoured and the only person to have received both the Garden Retail Lifetime Achievement Award (2016) and the Garden Media Guild Lifetime Achievement Award (2017) .
About Richard Jackson Garden
We launched our website in 2015 to encourage, advise and inspire everyone to get the best out of your plants and garden or outdoor space and make it somewhere that you will really love to be. We are passionate about making gardening easy and accessible and believe, with a bit of help, everyone can be a green fingered success.
We are delighted this year to be adding to the website our online shop to bring you both our exclusive range of high performance Flower Power garden products and for the first time, a specially selected and curated range of Richard’s favourite plants.
Our enthusiastic team of experienced garden advisers and writers are here to share their knowledge, ideas, recommendations and advice through our ‘Get Gardening’ editorial link and Free ‘Gardening Club’.
Let us inspire you to make the most of your outdoor space, make easy work of those gardening tasks and help you to get great results. Join us on a gardening adventure… no previous experience necessary!
About Flower Power
In 2007, Richard launched his first product, Flower Power Premium Plant Food, to help everyone grow wonderful flowers, fruits and vegetables. Since then it’s sold over a million packs and become the gold medal winning secret of success for many home gardeners and professional growers.
Today, we have a complete range of easy to use, high quality, high performance Flower Power garden products, researched & developed from professional market formulas to help everyone grow bigger, better and healthier plants.