We lived in Blackrock in Dublin and I was packed off to my grandfather to learn some manners as a young fella. He had retired from the Munster and Leinster Bank to Kilmacanogue. He was a great gardener, and I just followed him around every day and thought he was wonderful.
When I went home again, I gardened in our own back garden. My parents let me do anything I liked, which was great. I went to work in AIB as a 20-year-old because my parents made me. I always thought I’d work outdoors, but once I had the cushy number, which it was once upon a time, I stayed at the bank.
I had hobby jobs as a green keeper, and I used to do gardening jobs for fun. Then I saw a tree fern in the early 1990s with a family friend. She was a friend of my mother who had passed away. The rest is history you could say.
The tree fern just captivated me. I remember spending something like £45 on a tree fern as a young married man. I saw one two years later for £125 and I thought, isn’t it easier to buy a whole container of them from Australia? That’s how it started, really.
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In 1999, I got my first container and then, like a drug habit, I just kept collecting. My poor father’s back garden was getting jammed up with stuff so I started looking for somewhere else. Being the Celtic Tiger, I thought I could afford anything. I needed somewhere more amenable to my plants, and that meant the southwest coast. All I wanted was three acres with a little bit of a house, and wouldn’t I retire early and take it easy.
I had visited Kells Bay Gardens in Co Kerry because they had bought some tree ferns from me. I remember the impact it had – the physicality of this place with hundreds and hundreds of tree ferns, it was magical. Then it came on the market. As I was signing on the dotted line in 2006, my solicitor, who is a friend, said, you know you have bought a bottomless pit?
Kells Bay is so unique as a piece of land. We are in Dingle Bay, we get the benefit of the Gulf Stream, so it’s very mild. We are sitting between Foley Mountain and Knocknadobar so the westerlies usually go over us. We have about 50-odd acres of wilderness that we garden.
The first tree ferns here were planted in the late 1800s. What you see when you walk through the tree fern forest is what nature did afterwards. The spores and the seeds just loved it. We estimate there are well more than 600 huge tree ferns here now. We call it the primeval forest. Netflix filmed a piece for Our Planet here about the biggest ever millipede that lived 70 million years ago.
Tree ferns are very elegant. They are just good-looking plants and I have a panache for them. They are not actually trees, they are tree-like. It is the primeval-ness of them – anyone who looks at an unfurling frond will be captivated by it.
The Celtic Tiger stopped roaring and we went into a serious recession. I had spent a couple of million on a pipe dream. During the recession, when I was struggling quite badly and I had no business – we’ve only had a viable business for the past 10 years – up in Dublin, you could be getting letters from banks saying, sell this, do that. But anytime I was at Kells Bay, it was very therapeutic, the atmosphere there was very calming. It is a great place to work and live.
To be a good gardener, I say be confident. Don’t worry. I’ve learned 90 per cent of everything I know – and I think I do an okay job – through my fingertips and my eyes. Of course there will be failures, but experiment. Give plants a bit of TLC and observe them and they will tell you a story.
I could have somebody in Monkstown who wants a 10ft tree fern, or a big corporation that wants something for an atrium. The landscapers around Ireland know that Billy has unusual tree ferns and they ring me up.
I was invited to compete at the Chelsea Flower Show in 2018. I met Queen Elizabeth for a one-to-one, which was very nice. I did very well, but I didn’t get gold that time, I got a silver gilt which is like a B+. I went back in 2021 and I got my gold medal at Chelsea and at Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival. That was hard to describe, it was a great feeling.
I brought my bicycle over to Chelsea, and I cycled in at 7am. With my eyesight, from 10 yards away, it was hard to tell, but I was looking for one word and then I saw “Gold” and it was just wonderful. It’s like the Olympics. You think, “Did I really do it, was that me, was that somebody else?”
It’s all systems go now and in a few weeks I’ll be at Chelsea again. This year, it will be a 100sq m (1,076sq ft) display called Kells Bay Gardens. It will be tree ferns, ground ferns, we will have three or four tonnes of rock, the moss, everything comes from Kells Bay. Every square inch is meant to be perfection.
Every morning I get up, I’m excited. I’m just back from six weeks in South America visiting different countries and islands in the Pacific, just to see plants. I have a big order for France, so tomorrow I’m driving to Brittany. I will deliver plants to collectors and garden centres, I will eat French food and I come back a few days later. I tell everybody it’s a business trip, but they laugh because they know I love it.
We all have the odd bad day where something doesn’t arrive on time or something gets broken in transit or a tree falls over in a storm and it sets you back mentally, but the feel-good factor working with plants is amazing.
It’s hard to say why we love anything, but it’s very fulfilling just seeing the new buds on the magnolias beside me here pushing out. It’s the start of a new season. The temperature is up and everything is moving now, very, very fast.
– In conversation with Joanne Hunt