Terry Underhill FCIHort 1938-2022
Born in Leyton in East London Terry grew up in a socialist background, his father Reg, was created a Life Peer in 1979. He first learnt of the pleasures of gardening, aged four years, when he raised a crop of radish from seed and realsied that this was to be his way forward. In 1954, following schooling in Leyton and Birmingham, where he attended the Central Grammar School, he secured an apprenticeship with the City Parks Department which ran a training school headed by Ken Hulme.
Ken’s career move in the 1950s took him to the garden of one of England’s greatest patrons of plant introductions, that of A.K.Bulley. Founded in 1898, by then it was The University of Liverpool’s Botanic Gardens at Ness on Wirral, and, looking to appoint a propagator, Ken chose the person he knew from his days in the Birmingham City Parks apprenticeship scheme. Terry was duly offered the post in 1960, and moved into the ground floor flat in Mickwell Brow [ Bulley’s old house ] with his wife Dorothy, a fellow student. He went on to become Botanical Foreman working on several development projects including the rock garden and heather garden. The latter involved regular visits to the Burton garden of Mr. Plummer where a fine collection of Ericas and Callunas yielded cutting material for the new, south facing bed above the Picnic Area which commanded fine views across the River Dee to the Welsh hills beyond. His involvement with heathers led Terry to write his book ‘Heaths and Heathers’ which he published in 1972, a book which featured several photographs taken at Ness.
In 1964 Terry left Ness to take up the job of Superintendent of Grounds and Gardens at Dartington Hall near Totnes in Devon a position he held for 16 years. His association with the founders, Lionel and Dorothy Elmhirst, was often uncomfortable and he narrowly escaped being sacked for insubordination. Terry was proud and stubborn, not afraid to call a spade a spade and could, at times be a little abrasive.
His horticultural reputation secured him a series of half hour gardening programmes for TV Southwest; regional radio and newspaper articles; a leader of Botanical tours and country-wide lectures. Outside horticulture he was a Justice of the Peace, a member of the local Morris Men and Chair of the South Devon Group of the Alpine Garden Society.
A life lived to the full founded on strong connections to Ness B.G.
Written by Peter Cunnington
Terry was a founding member of the Institute of Horticulture (later becoming the Chartered Institute of Horticulture).
