TOP OF THE TREE
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Bailiffs first appeared in England in the Middle Ages. It is an ancient and honourable title and Ashley Stephenson. Bailiff of the Royal Parks, wears it with pride.
In all that time. I am the only one who started as a gardener and finished as bailiff," he says. -No-one has ever done it before. Previous Bailiffs of the Royal Parks have all been just administrators."
It is no mean achievement for the son of a colliery worker from Northumberland. As one of four children and during the great depression of the 1930s. Stephenson clearly remembers the hard times.
-One of my earliest and most vivid memories is having to keep quiet and listen for the pit burzer to blow. If it did. it meant that there was no work needed that day." he says.
It was the economic harshness of that upbringing which brought him into gardening. -Everyone in the pit village had allotments," he says. "We had them to grow food. We didn't have the money to buy fresh vegetables and all the children were pressganged into helping out on the allotment. "One day I suddenly found it was no longer a chore and I was enjoying it." Stephenson recalls. "I decided to be a gardener." That was that.
He left school at 15. joined Newcastleupon-Tyne Parks Department as an apprentice and began the long climb to the top of the tree. He was ambitious even then. Night school courses in English helped him polish his grasp of language and grammar, and National Service in the Middle East and Cyprus gave him the opportunity to study foreign flora.
Army life did not suit Stephenson and the world weary strain of it all left him "disillusioned with all sorts of things". His resolve to go on with a career in gardening was almost shattered. but after being demobbed he made the first of a number of choice moves in his life by joining the staff of Low Gosforth House, a large private house with its own estate. Head gardener Sam Taylor was -an exhibitor of note" and Stephenson saw 4the world again, through a different pair of eyes. "In parks, you grow to get good-quality plants. In exhibiting. you grow the plant as well as it can be grown, irrespective of cost,he says. "Sam rekindled my love of plants."
Two years on he left for a two-year stint in landscape gardening, before moving to the Royal Horticultural Society's gardens at Wisley as a student gardener. "That was my finishing school," he A says. "You learned an in depth knowledge of plants. MI' and how to research them, Wisley taught me to ask the right questions and where to go to find the right answers." Even today, he knows the Latin names of the . plants around him, hut not their common names.
He left there determined to become a boss somewhere, "I wanted to tell people what to do, why and how." There is no sense of arrogance in the man, just a driving need to get it right. In October 1954 he joined the staff of Hyde Park as a humble gardener and quickly rose through the ranks.
He is still there, living in a magnificent "grace and favour" Georgian mansion just up from the Serpentine. Hyde Park remains his favourite. "It's where I started and it's where I'll finish."
He also runs Green Park, St James' Park, Kensington Gardens, Regent's Park, Richmond Park, Bushey Park and Greenwich Park, as well as the grounds of Buckingham Palace, Clarence House, the House of Commons, Downing Street, Ham House, Osterley Park, the National Maritime Museum. and Trafalgar Square.
Stephenson has 400 gardeners to control and a police force of 162 officers, as well as an ancillary staff of 100 and a transport department of 127 vehicles, all on hire from the Crown Suppliers.
At the end of his career, he has no regrets. though given the chance again he might have specialised more in trees and shrubs.
"You'll never be a rich man in this game," says Stephenson, "but you can live well and get tremendous personal satisfaction. There isn't a job in this country could interest me now. Not in money, prestige or fulfilment."