George Harrison's Secret Passion? Gardening | Clash Magazine Music News, Reviews & Interviews
Spring is in full flush, so Clash has decided to revisit George Harrison’s abiding passion – gardening.
Sure, the Beatles icon’s first passion may have been the guitar, but the free-thinker could take or leave the vagaries of the music industry. Famously the first of the Fab Four to tire of the road and its endless travel, he clearly had an innate urge to put down some roots.
First developing his green finger at Surrey property Kinfauns, George Harrison then saved Friar Park – a spectacular Victorian neo-Gothic Friar Park mansion – from demolition in 1970. Perhaps the main attraction for the guitarist was the 36-acre garden – woefully overgrown, George built a team of 10 gardeners and helped them pull each weed, and plant each carefully chosen fern and flower.
In fact, his autobiography I Me Mine was famously dedicated “to gardeners everywhere”. George Harrison wrote:
I’m really quite simple. I don’t want to be in the business full time, because I’m a gardener. I plant flowers and watch them grow. I don’t go out to clubs. I don’t party. I stay at home and watch the river flow.
Source: ClashMusic/clashmusic.com
