Carol Klein, broadcaster and author, has been awarded the Horace Hagedorn Market Maker Award for 2008 in recognition of her unique contribution to encouraging many more people to grow their own vegetables for the first time.
Judged each year by members of the Garden Centre Association throughout the UK and Northern Ireland, Carol joins the ranks of previous winners that include Alan Titchmarsh, Peter Seabrook, Dr David Hessayon and David Austin.
She was presented with the award by Head of Marketing at Scotts Miracle-Gro, Paula Parker. The Horace Hagedorn Award, sponsored by The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company, seeks to acknowledge initiatives and people that continue his work of attracting more people to successful gardening and delivering market growth to the whole UK gardening industry.
The award for 2008 goes to Carol Klein, an enthusiastic plantswoman who has done a great deal to encourage new people to grasp the nettle and start to grow their own vegetables for the first time. She is a writer of note and regularly contributes to Garden News, Gardener’s World magazine and a weekly column in The Guardian newspaper.
She has also worked tirelessly on the Gardeners World TV programme since 2005 to enliven and broaden its appeal to men and women when it most needed a bubbly personality that could communicate the love of plants and gardening in a down to earth way.
This award also goes to Carol with the thanks of the gardening industry for her inspirational TV programmes, notably Grow Your Own Veg and its accompanying book of the same title. She has done a great deal to promote and nurture the ‘grow-your-own’ movement so that in her own words “Growing your own vegetables has now become de riguer”
Her broad knowledge of the subject comes not from books, but from home-grown experience. Speaking of the award Carol said, “I’m deeply honoured that the best garden centres in the UK acknowledge that the TV programmes and the book have had such a fundamental effect on the gardening industry. I’m pleased to think that I may have helped inspire a lot more people to grow vegetables for the first time. Let’s hope the trend continues into fruit.”
