Rachel de Thame | |
|---|---|
 De Thame at the 2009 Hampton Court Palace Flower Show | |
| Nationality | British |
| Occupation(s) | Gardener, television presenter, actress |
| Years active | 1988–present |
| Spouses | Stephen Colover (m. 1986;div. 1993)Gerard de Thame (m. 1999) |
| Children | 4 |
Rachel de Thame (born Rachel Cohen) is an English gardener, television presenter and actress.
From the age of 10, de Thame studied ballet to a professional standard at the Royal Ballet School, White Lodge, Richmond Park. [1] De Thame contracted glandular fever at age 15, and chose to give up her dream of a dancing career at age 19. She then undertook a course in Drama at Southgate College in 1979–80 and studied History of Art at London's City Lit, after which she worked for a short period for Colnaghi, a well-respected international firm of art dealers in London. [2] She then married for the first time.
While pregnant with her first baby, de Thame was recruited by a modelling agency and went on to enjoy a successful modelling career. A major part of de Thame's modelling included appearances in TV ads. Casting agents began to suggest de Thame for acting roles. By 1998, she had appeared in the mini-series Merlin and in the British feature film Bodywork; credited in both productions as Rachel Colover.
However, de Thame decided not to continue pursuing an acting career and in 1998, indulging a passion for plants and gardening inherited from her father, she enrolled for two years at the English Gardening School, studying Practical Horticulture and Plants & Plantsmanship, [3] shortly after de Thame auditioned for BBC2's Gardeners' World. Initially presenting on the programme every week, following the birth of her second child from her second marriage she now (as of 2014) makes occasional appearances on the programme. She has also filmed her own series' for the BBC, Small Town Gardens and Gardening with the Experts. De Thame also co-presents the BBC's annual coverage of the Chelsea Flower Show, Hampton Court Palace Flower Show as part of the Royal Horticultural Society output on BBC Two. Other gardening series include Gardeners' World Top Tips and Great British Garden Revival for the BBC, and Countrywise for ITV1. Non-gardening related television appearances include Going for a Song and Call My Bluff , both for the BBC.
In 2008, de Thame designed the 2008 LK Bennett garden at the Chelsea Flower Show, for which she was awarded a silver medal. [4] In 2012 de Thame designed the floral decorations for the Royal Barge (The Spirit of Chartwell), used to convey Her Majesty The Queen and other members of the Royal Family during the Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant. In 2016 de Thame co-curated the RHS London Rose Show
De Thame has written two gardening books, Small Town Gardens and Rachel de Thame's Top 100 Star Plants, and co-wrote Gardening with the Experts. She currently writes a regular horticultural column for The Sunday Times and has also contributed to the gardening pages of The Daily Telegraph , Gardeners' World Magazine, Woman's Own Magazine, Eden Magazine. She is currently vice-president of the wildflower charity Plantlife.
De Thame has a lupin variety named after her. [5] in addition to Dahlia 'Rachel de Thame', Auricula 'Rachel de Thame and Rose 'Rachel' was also named in her honour by Pococks Roses.
In 2024 de Thame teamed up with her daughter Lauren, who is an illustrator, for her new book A Flower Garden For Pollinators. [6]
She grew up on the outskirts of North London, the daughter and granddaughter of predominantly Jewish immigrants. [7]
De Thame married her first husband, Stephen Colover, in June 1986. They had two children, and divorced around 1993.[ citation needed ]
She and her second husband, Gerard de Thame, have two children. They live in West London and the Cotswolds, Gloucestershire, having moved from Oxfordshire. [8]
She was diagnosed with breast cancer in early 2018 and began treatment. [9]
The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), founded in 1804 as the Horticultural Society of London, is the UK's leading gardening charity.
The RHS Chelsea Flower Show, formally known as the Great Spring Show, is a garden show held for five days in May by the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) in the grounds of the Royal Hospital Chelsea in Chelsea, London. Held at Chelsea since 1912, the show is attended by members of the British royal family.
The Hampton Court Garden Festival is an annual British flower show, held in early July of each year. The show is run by the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) at Hampton Court Palace in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. The show features show gardens, floral marquees and pavilions, talks, and demonstrations. Erected on the north and south sides of the Long Water in Hampton Court Park, it is the second major national show after the Chelsea Flower Show, but has a different character, focusing more on environmental issues, growing your own food, vegetables and cookery, as well as selling gardening accessories, plants and flowers.
RHS Flower Show Tatton Park held at Tatton Park, near Knutsford, Cheshire, first began in 1999 by the Royal Horticultural Society. The show houses the RHS National Flower Bed Competition, Young Designer of the Year Award and a wide range of inspirational show gardens, smaller 'Back to Back' gardens, visionary gardens and a number of marquees displaying prize plants and flora exhibits. Other key features of the show are the floral marquee and plant plaza, the arts and heritage pavilion, and the floral design studio.
Charlotte Elouise Dimmock is an English gardening expert and television presenter. She was a member of the team on Ground Force, a BBC gardening makeover programme, airing from 1997 to 2005.
Gardeners' World is a long-running British gardening programme, first broadcast on 5 January 1968. The 2024 series is the 55th. Its first series was presented by Ken Burras and came from Oxford Botanical Gardens. Up until 2020 most of its episodes have been 30 minutes in duration; however, this changed in spring 2020 when the format was extended to an hour. All episodes in the 2021 series onwards follow this 60-minute format. Gardeners' World currently airs between mid-March and late October on BBC Two every Friday. The programme usually takes a four-month winter break from November to February.
The Victoria Medal of Honour (VMH) is awarded to British horticulturists resident in the United Kingdom whom the Royal Horticultural Society Council considers deserving of special honour by the Society.
Joseph Samuel Swift is an English garden designer, journalist and television presenter.
Carol Ann Klein is an English gardening expert, who also works as a television presenter and newspaper columnist.
Marian Foster is an English television and radio presenter. She is best known for presenting BBC One's Pebble Mill at One from 1972 to 1986 and Garden Mania on BBC Radio Newcastle and BBC Radio Tees.
Christopher Paul Beardshaw is a British garden designer, plantsman, author, speaker, and broadcaster.
Paul Hervey-Brookes is an multi-award-winning garden designer and plantsman who no longer lives in the Cotswolds, England He lives alone in the Loire Valley in France.
The National Association of Flower Arrangement Societies (NAFAS) is a society of flower arranging clubs and societies in the United Kingdom.
David Martin Domoney, C Hort. FCI Hort is an English Chartered Horticulturist and celebrity gardener. He co-presents the TV gardening programme Love Your Garden, alongside Alan Titchmarsh, and is the resident gardener on ITV1's This Morning.
Plantify.co.uk is an online plant shop based in Windsor, Berkshire (UK) that sells a wide variety of herbaceous and perennial plants. The plant shop supplies over 3150 plants sourced from small British growers and hosts a Plant Finder encyclopedia and free garden design tool.
Mary Rose Spiller was an English horticulturist and teacher who devoted her life to the dissemination of successful horticulture, particularly by women, in Britain. She wrote two gardening books: Growing Fruit (1980), and Weeds, Search and Destroy (1985).
Waterperry Gardens are gardens with a museum in the village of Waterperry, near Wheatley, east of Oxford in Oxfordshire, England.
Sue-Anne Hilbre Biggs was the Director General of the Royal Horticultural Society, retiring in June 2022 as the longest-serving Director General in the charity's history. Biggs began her career in the travel industry, where she worked for 30 years, and was awarded an Outstanding Achievement Award by the Travel Weekly Globe Travel Awards. She was made a CBE in the 2017 New Year Honours, for her services to the environment at ornamental horticulture industries.
Pamela Schwerdt MBE was the joint head gardener at Sissinghurst Castle Garden from 1959 to 1990, and a pioneering horticulturalist.
Mark Lane is a British television presenter, landscape designer, columnist, radio broadcaster and writer.
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