Home-grown produce and cooking a nice mix for Adam Frost

Adam Frost will be bringing his creative gardening mind and his love of cooking together as he presents his headline show garden, The Chef's Table, at the show at the NEC.

Visitors coming to the BBC Gardeners' World and Good Food shows will be able to take in a large, walk-through garden which aims to be a vibrant celebration of home-grown produce with a rustic outdoor cooking and eating space as part of the setting.

The Gardeners’ World presenter said it was the first time he had done a show garden in a long time and decided he wanted to done something which mixed the two shows together, while also indulging his love of cooking.

He said: "The Chef's Table is a little bit self-indulgent if I'm being honest as I haven't done a show garden for a long time at this show, but was asked to come back and do whatever I wanted.

"Gardeners' World Live links up hugely with the cooking side of the Good Food Show, and I love cooking, so I began working on the garden and what I do is create the person that I'm creating the garden for before I begin creating it.

"In my head, I had a chef who bought himself a new place and found there was a rough area of the garden, so he goes down one day to have a look and comes across some apple trees and a little stream.

"Over a period of time, he begins to realise that this would be a really good place to come down, spend time with friends and family and do a little bit of cooking, so that's how the whole thing is driven and I've built it from there."

Adam will be hosting a daily programme of ‘plot-to-plate’ themed conversations and demos on his garden with chefs and culinary friends from the BBC Good Food Show Summer, including James Martin, Michel Roux, and BBC Good Food’s Cassie Best.

He said the garden could also be a good way of showing how self-sufficiency can work and show people that you can grow what you cook and spoke of his own experiences.

He said: "There's lots of levels of why we probably should grow more and talk about understanding where your food has come from as it can be organic, but not cost a fortune and it doesn't have to have food miles on it and it could live seasonally.

"The other side of that is people can say that they need time to do it, but the people who do it set up home allotments and it becomes a staple of their lives.

"For me, I love cooking and I love growing, with veg and fruit growing being a hobby for me, with a big veg garden in my front garden that I lose a lot of hours pottering about in.

"It goes back to my grandparents as one of them had an allotment and I spent a lot of time with them there and enjoyed doing it, and I enjoy picking stuff like sea kale and making a dish up with it that everyone can sit around the table and enjoy."

Adam Frost's history with the Gardeners' World Show goes back to being part of the first show in 1992 with Geoff Hamilton and, as he puts it, cut his teeth as a designer.

He said it was a great moment to be able to go back and be part of something his kids liked.

He said: "I would go over there and do a lot of things, so to go back x number of years later with a show garden is really special.

"I enjoy the show because I've been involved so long, but I also like the people that turn up at the show, so it works for me on all sorts of levels.

"It's also one show that my kids will always come to because it has the Good Food Show as well and it's normally on Father's Day."

Adam also said it was a great opportunity to get some of his favourite chefs on to cook up produce from the garden and said he felt very lucky to be able to combine two things he loved.

He said: "I'm a lucky boy as I'm a gardener that's done alright, because when I was a kid, they said there wasn't much choice for me, other than the army, being a gardener or being a chef, so it's great to be able to blend the two together now.

"I live in Stamford, so this is also the closest show for me as well and Mr Frost and the kids get to come and go around and get all the free samples and that's where the balance comes in as it's a family show.

"It might not be the whole family who are interested in gardening, but there's a lovely balance between the food and gardening and it's a great interactive show, so I'm thrilled to be part of it."

Tickets for BBC Gardeners’ World Live at the NEC Birmingham from June 13 to 16, including entry to BBC Good Food Show Summer, are on sale now at bbcgardenersworldlive.com