Rhosgadfan gardener to step back in time in BBC show

A POPULAR gardening expert has been working hard preparing a major new BBC Cymru Wales programme.

Russell Jones, aged 30, from Rhosgadfan, is well known to viewers of S4C’s Byw yn yr Ardd as their gardening guru and has spent the last few months ensuring a vegetable garden is ready for the new BBC series Snowdonia 1890, which is currently being filmed in Dyffryn Nantlle.

The show, from the makers of the popular series Coal House will follow the real life struggles of two modern Welsh families as they experience life in a Victorian era farmhouse.

The families will be living on the wild and unforgiving hills of Snowdonia, sharing cramped living conditions, toiling the land and working the quarry faces, and Russell thinks they will be in for a shock. He said: “This was a really interesting project for me to work on and it’s sure to be a massive reality check for the two families involved.

“The view might be beautiful up here, but they will have to face up to the reality that life could be very hard. You couldn’t just pop down to Tesco’s in those days. People who lived here worked here, and often would die here, especially during a hard winter.

“I was approached by the BBC to work on the show after they saw my work on Byw yn yr Ardd, where I have created vegetable and herb gardens on a mountainside near my home. Only certain vegetables can survive the harsh climate here, so I’ve been busy planting cabbages, cale and leeks, hardy vegetables really, just as the people from that era would have done.”

Russell, whose passion for gardening started as a child, warned that the families, who will move into their new homes soon, will be hit by instant challenges when it comes to food. He added: “This time of year is what you would call a ‘hungry gap’. A lot of the food stocked up over the winter will be running out, and the new crops aren’t ready so it could be a fallow period for them.

“Their diet is going to become a lot less interesting as well, I hope they like cabbage! They also won’t have the luxury of depending on their neighbours as you could back then, where people would trade and barter if they were short of supplies. These people will be on their own.

“It’s great that they are filming around this area, I’ve lived here all my life and I think it will put villages like Rhosgadfan on the map.” If they could eat the view you get from this hillside they’d never go hungry!”

Snowdonia 1890 appears on BBC Cymru Wales this autumn.