What has a famous Australian gardener got to do with our summer camp?

Although less than one per cent of this blog’s audience is made up of readers from Australia, a nice little story has sprung up from down under, unearthing a connection between the Australian horticulturalist and broadcaster, Peter Cundall, and our summer camp at Birkdale.

Peter Cundall is something of a household name in Australia after hosting the television show Gardening Australia for nearly twenty years. Born in Manchester in 1927, Cundall moved to Australia after an incredible career in the British and Australian armed forces during the Second World War and the Korean War.

Cundall has often gone on record to describe his familial home in Manchester as “the poorest of the poor”. In an article written in 2018 for the Australian rural magazine, The Weekly Times, Cundall revealed that it was at the charity’s Summer Camp for Poor City Boys that he had his first glimpse of the sea – an experience that forged a lifelong love of the coastline and offered, perhaps, his very first gardening lesson.

Any summary of the article would not do Peter’s vivid reminiscences and beautifully written prose justice so you can enjoy the article here.

Not unlike this scene, Cundall recalls the packed train ride to the Southport summer camp