HT sows seeds for childhood reminiscences

10:45am Thursday 1st February 2007

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A NEW York landscape garden designer was amazed when he opened a letter from his family in Hereford to be faced with an image of his seven-year-old self preparing pots for the annual hyacinth growing competition at St Owen's School.

"It was extraordinary and really lifted my spirits," says Nigel Rollings, whose parents live in Burghill.

"The hyacinth growing competition is one of the few memories I have of growing up in Hereford. I was intoxicated by the overpowering fragrance of the hyacinths.

"Since then I've planted thousands of hyacinths for people," says Nigel, a landscape garden designer in New York for the past 21 years.

He also teaches urban garden design at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and last year won an APLD (Association of Professional Landscape Designers) Silver Award for residential garden design.

The appearance of the pictures also struck a chord with Jeff Farr.

"I hadn't given it a thought for years," said Jeff, who grew up to become a motor mechanic. "And initially when I saw the photographs, the first thing they reminded me of was the time I thought I'd won the competition."

Jeff, who is now 57, got a big surprise, though, when he looked a bit more closely at the photographs and discovered his younger self in not just one, but two of the pictures that had been printed.

Half a century later, though, Jeff had never forgotten the moment Mr Kemeys, the teacher who introduced the green-fingered competition to the school, announced that that year's prize had gone to a boy called Farr.

"Two of us stood up, me and another boy called Paul Farr. It quickly turned out that it was him, not me, who had won," recalls Jeff. "But at the end of the presentation Mr Kemeys announced that I'd won a Highly Commended certificate. I'll never know if it was a consolation prize for the embarrassment of thinking I'd won!"

Alan Eyles, who now lives in Merthyr Tydfil, was another former pupil who spotted himself in one of the pictures standing next to a boy wearing glasses, who he was able to identify as Robert Smale.

"We called him the snail because he was so slow with class work," Alan remembers. "But he was very clever."