The landscape designer Adam Frost, best known for award-winning gardens at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show and presenting on BBC Gardeners’ World, has pets quietly vying for supremacy in their bid to get on camera.
What is your current roster of pets?
At home near Stamford, Lincolnshire, with Mrs Frost and three of my children we have Isla, the labrador — named after the Scotch I quite like from Islay — Ash the cat and the new kid on the block, our miniature Jack Russell, Buster. To be fair Buster partly arrived because my 18-year-old son said, “Dad, I think you need to get Mum something to care for,” although he did follow that with, “Because she’s doing my head in.”
Do your pets try to steal the show on TV?
Totally. With Isla playing the supporting role, Ash the cat is the main star of Gardeners’ World without a doubt. Now Buster’s arrived the nation has slightly fallen in love with him as well. The cat gets better each year: we joke that he disappears off to Rada in the closed season and comes back a little more tuned to make his entrance with perfect timing. Now the dogs have started doing the same.
“The nation has slightly fallen in love with Buster,” Frost says
CHRIS RADBURN FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES
Any bad habits?
Not massively. I did make one public apology. I’m watering while doing a piece to camera when Buster decided to relieve himself behind me. I didn’t know it had happened. You can imagine them sat in the edit room saying, “Shall we leave it in?” Habit-wise Ash tends to lie on boxes of seedlings when the greenhouse is warm: you go in and half of them are flat in the shape of a cat. And Buster comes in with his bowl in his mouth and throws it on the floor. You go, “Hold on a minute, I’ve fed him once today.” Or the children text, “Have you fed the cat?” Either way you can guarantee the cat will get a second dinner.
What other creatures have you had?
Cocker spaniels and other labs. Once we had ponies: one called Pinky would follow you round. If the gate was open, his head would pop through the top half of the kitchen door.
Do you cook for your pets?
We have done when they’re poorly, coming home from the vets. We make chicken broth like my nan would. We’re quite soft in this house.
• Neil Hannon: my wife set up My Lovely Horse, an animal rescue charity
What was your favourite childhood pet?
When I was five or six I had a rescue dog called Boots (one white foot, the rest black). It was a mixed breed, alsatian/labrador, and it went with me everywhere, like to my laid-back Scruffy Nan’s. She had frogs and newts in her wild suburban garden where she’d let everything grow. Tidy Nan had a tortoise in her 1970s social housing with a rectangular lawn, washing line and concrete path. That was where I was taught to grow vegetables; the other garden was about freedom. Scruffy Nan collected Belfast porcelain sinks and got Grandad to block up the holes so she could fill them with plants and have a little water habitat with newts, frogs and water boatmen. They became fantastic worlds we’d lose ourselves in.
Buster with Isla the black labrador
CHRIS RADBURN FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES
Do you allow pets on your bed?
Right, this is the thing: we never did. But the dog Buster is really Mrs Frost’s dog. And Mrs Frost always has strong rules about dogs not being allowed upstairs — until Buster arrives. Buster goes where he wants but also takes Isla with him. Now the lab will be on the floor upstairs. So when I’m the first up and go back upstairs with a cup of tea the lab will be where I was.
Do your pets have a beauty regime?
Only in that Buster has a mirror where he admires himself. He does it the way Jack Russells do, cocking their heads slightly. To be fair, he’s a bit like the 18-year-old when he walks in the bedroom.
Do you spoil your pets?
Yes. It’s got worse as we’ve got older. When the kids were young, with pets everything had to be more controlled. I don’t think Mrs Frost would shout at me for saying she’s probably using them slightly as child replacements, with the fuss she makes of them.
What is the most significant object they have destroyed?
Buster chewed a nice pair of stereo earphones, which now only work in mono.
What are the most embarrassing antics your pets have indulged in?
Buster’s got some not-the-nicest habits when you’ve got people round. He’ll sit there and try and lick the inside of the labrador’s ears.
• F1 driver Alex Albon on his zoo: ‘It’s like a cat mountain’
Could you love a cat?
I love my cat dearly. And they say when I’m away he sulks. When I come home he’ll be around me and on me. In my first house, living by myself, I had two ginger toms. Every time I got home from work one would be sat just near the parking space.
Frost and Ash plotting together on Gardeners’ World
BBC
What’s your pet peeve?
The only thing I wish about the labrador is that when you start stroking her she’d manage to stay vertical, rather than roll on her back and expect you to get down to carry on stroking her. I say, “I can’t reach you now. Either I’ve got to bend down or you’ve got to get back up again.”
Do your pets watch you on TV?
No. Mind you, Buster’s quite new to television and Mrs Frost has been watching it a bit; but then fast-forwarding bits. She’ll say, “Buster was brilliant on the telly last night.” And I’ll say, “What about me?”
Adam Frost’s tour is running until October 26, 2025, then from March 17 to April 28, 2026. For tickets and information visit fane.co.uk
Comments are closed.