IT'S Tatton Flower Show week - and while in past years it's meant dodging downpours, this year there's been a mini heatwave at the Cheshire event.

So when I catch up with Tatton Park's jovial head gardener Sam Youd it's the perfect excuse for scones, strawberries - oh, and a glass or two of champagne.

The fizz comes in handy as Sam is yet again celebrating winning the prestigious Gold medal from Royal Horticultural Society judges for his Japanese show garden at the annual floral extravaganza - his 10th gong in as many years.

Sam is also something of a champers expert so it would be rude not to indulge in a tipple.

He tells me: "If someone takes you for dinner you can tell how important you are by the size of the bubbles in the champagne. The smaller the bubble is the key to it all."

Sam is far from your conventional gardener. He is an extensively well-travelled bon viveur, having lectured on gardening across the globe, and he regales me with tales of having eaten pretty much anything in his time, and I mean anything.

He chuckles: "When I go abroad, I like to eat what the locals eat. I've eaten everything from deep-fried scorpions to very rare yellow stone frog at the Great Wall of China, to raw horse meat in Japan."

Estate

Sam has been at Tatton Park for 29 years. He joined the estate from a managerial position overseeing the municipal gardens in his home city of Liverpool.

"I looked out of my window one day and realised I wanted to get back on to the tools. I came to Tatton as a propagator, planting seeds."

After just three years, Sam became head gardener and it's a role he's enjoyed ever since. These days, his job takes in much more than simply tending the extensive grounds of Tatton - he's heavily involved in education programmes and encouraging children to get started in gardening.

Highlights of his career include the restoration of the Japanese and kitchen gardens at the historic estate and seeing the RHS show come to Tatton for the first time 10 years ago.

"One of the funniest stories from the flower show was a couple of years back when we were putting the final preparations to our show garden and we were the last on the site. We suddenly heard some clatterings, had a look around only to find about 200 sheep had somehow got through and were heading in. It was tempting to leave them to it, and just preserve our own garden! But of course we alerted security and safely herded them off the ground to avert complete disaster."

Sam, a father of seven, is 61 now, but there are no plans to retire from gardening.

"You can't retire from a hobby can you?" he beams. "A fella once said to me that every day not spent in the garden is a day wasted, and you really can't argue with that."

The RHS Tatton Flower show runs until Sunday. Children under 15 go free this year, for tickets call 0870 906 3781 or see rhs.org.uk/tatton/2008/.

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