There’s a question I get asked all the time. And when I say all the time, I mean it’s literally without fail the very first question I get asked in any press interview, on any podcast, by every cab driver and every stranger in the pub, as soon as they find out what I do: “So, what made you first interested in plants?”
“Did you have a really influential teacher in school? Does it run in your family? Seriously, what on earth happened to you?” I used to feel this huge pressure, particularly when I was younger – especially in my 20s – to make up some kind of superhero origin story. “Well, my grandma in Borneo used to take me around her garden…” (As she did, with all my many cousins, none of whom really care about plants now.) “I guess, growing up in the tropics meant I was physically around more plants as a kid, so there was more chance to become fascinated.” (Albeit in Singapore: a country better known back in the 1980s and 1990s for its hermetically sealed,
air-conditioned shopping malls.)
