Christine Walkden has been a horticulturist since the age of ten when she first obtained an allotment and started growing vegetables and flowers, which she sold to her school teachers and local residents.
On leaving school her first job was with a local parks department before going to the Lancashire College of Agriculture. She then worked at two experimental horticultural stations, one in Warwickshire, working with ornamental nursery stock and the other in Yorkshire, working with rhubarb and red beet. Christine then worked at The Royal Botanic Gardens Kew based at Wakehurst Place, looking after the growing side of the seed physiology unit before moving to Llangollen in North Wales where she worked for Dobies, Carter, Cuthbert and Dom Seedsmen as a Technical Advisor. Following this, she then moved to the Rhondda Valley to set up a training workshop for the Manpower Services Commission.
Christine then returned to college at Pershore and then onto Writtle College near Chelmsford before becoming a lecturer in Horticulture at Capel Manor in Enfield. A move to the Baby Bio Company pbi came next where she was an Advisory Manager for the garden products division.
A major change followed when she decided to go freelance working as a Plantswomen and horticulturist, lecturing nationally and internationally. A past presenter on BBC’s Gardeners World. Presenter of two of her own series on BBC 2 TV Christine’s Garden, she also broadcasts on Local and National Radio and is a past winner of the Garden Writers’ Guild Radio Broadcasting Award. Christine also appears on BBC Breakfast, GMTV, and The Paul O Grady Show and is the resident gardening expert for BBC 1’s The One Show. She is also a BBC Radio 4 gardener’s Question time panellist.
As an author Christine Walkden has written `The Houseplant Almanac`, A Year In Christine’s Garden – The Secrete Diary of a Garden Lover, and No-nonsense Vegetable Gardening – How to grow vegetables in small gardens plus many articles for specialist societies such as the Alpine Garden Society and the Hardy Plant Society.
Christine’s latest book publication titled “Christine Walkden’s No Nonsense Container Gardening” is available in all good bookshops or from Amazon.
Christine works for many of the horticultural colleges, professional trade organisations,
Christine has led both garden tours and field trips throughout the world including Turkey, Iran, Kashmir, China, USA, Central Asia, S. Africa, the Mediterranean plus many European and East European countries. As a keen photographer, Christine illustrates her lectures and own work and holds an extensive library of wildflower and garden slides from around the world.
In September 2010 she received a Honorary Doctorate from Writtle College for services to Horticulture and in July 2011 was made a Fellow of Myerscough College in recognition of her substantial achievements as a Horticulturist and Plantswomen both nationally and internationally, along with her other achievements in the education, training and broadcasting sectors
Christine’s latest television media success has been her extremely popular 15 programme 3 week series on BBC One “Glorious Gardens From Above”, where she embarked on a journey to explore some of Britain’s most glorious countryside from a striking new perspective up up and away in a hot air balloon.
The series has been hailed as a televisual treat , warm in tone , rich in factual content, and spectacular to watch, it really caught the imagination of the public and was so popular that it was also transmitted on BBC2 television at weekends. Christine Walkden is very popular with the viewing public and to show their appreciation of her talents she has been voted TV Gardening Presenter Of The Year 2014
