Gardening show with hosts including Reg Chibnall and Eion Scarrow
Rex Chibnall's Bio circa 1970
I was born in London in 1904. My father was a cork importer, and my mother the daughter of a junior partner in a Birmingham cotton mill. They christened me Reginald Pelham Chibnall and should have known better! Education was at Seaford College, Sussex, where my wish to grow things was intensified by the need of the college people to grow their own vegetables owing to the 1914-18 war when food was becoming scarce. Later to France, then across Canada, always working in close contact with farm and forest flora and fauna, both domesticated and wild. A brief though enduring contact with bananas and limes in Bilboa in Central America. In 1927 to New Zealand, horrified to find very few Waikato farmers grew their own vegetables, but succeeded to persuading a few of them to so do. In 1936, I had my first commercial venture in commercial growing — in Greymouth, where rainfall was often in excess of 90 inches a year. After 19 years, sold up the four acres of bulbs, trees, glass-houses and so on and recommenced later in Governor's Bay. Loess soil and 23 inches of rain a year. Then to Waihi and finally to Hamilton. With all that experience behind one, writing a book should seem a simple affair — but without the constant encouragement and very real help of my wife Nessie, it would never have got beyond an idea, bless her!
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