annual gazette | 17 ‘This Was My Life’: A Conversation With Nick Firman
Loraine Gelsthorpe and Nick McBride Nick Firman retired as Head Gardener of Pembroke College in January 2021, after nearly 56 years of service to the College, having joined the College as an apprentice gardener in April 1965 at the age of 16. On a somewhat overcast day at the end of July, we met with Nick in the grounds of Pembroke College and sat down in the Fellows’ Garden to talk about his life at Pembroke. We began by asking him how he became interested in gardening in the first place. ‘I was always interested in gardening at home. My parents actually bought me a small greenhouse when I was 14 or 15 and I used to grow tomatoes and things like that in it. I asked them to get it for me. Then at school we had a period in an afternoon when we could do a subject like woodwork or pottery, and the school had just bought a new greenhouse so obviously I headed straight for that. It had a little plot of ground outside which we could cultivate and grow things on as well.’ Neither of Nick’s parents were particularly interested in gardening – ‘Dad used to do the garden, but he wasn’t keen, I think’ – and he attributes his interest to the fact that he ‘was never a great academic and gardening seemed like a nice job, out in the air and fairly relaxed.’ Nick’s exploration of gardening at school was interrupted by his getting the job as apprentice gardener on £5 a week at Pembroke College. Gordon Miller was the Head Gardener at Pembroke, having taken over from Bob Eley. Gordon’s son attended the same school as Nick. ‘Gordon’s son got to hear that I was looking for a job, and he must have told his father, and his father came down to my house to have a chat with me. He invited me back to the college to have a look round. When I went to the college, there was a chap near the rockery who looked like he was a gardener – so I asked him where the gardens department was. It turned out he was Meredith Dewey – he was always being mistaken for one of the gardeners.’ Nick was taken on, and brought under Gordon Miller’s wing. ‘Gordon taught me probably everything I know about gardening. He used to take me round different colleges and on other trips. There used to be something called the Walkerian Society at the Botanic Gardens, and we used to go there for lectures and talks on a Monday evening – though I don’t think that exists anymore. The College also sent me to Milton Farm School [now the College of West Anglia] where I earned certificates in horticulture.’ Interaction with the Fellowship was limited at that time. Fellows might bring their plants to the College greenhouse to be looked after, but otherwise their main contact was with Meredith Dewey, as the Garden Steward. ‘He was a lovely chap – very helpful and nice. He would come down and have a cup of tea and ask if we would do various jobs around the college and on his rockery. We did have to take the chance when he went on holiday to tidy up any gardening work that he had done himself – he was never
