Best known as the presenter of BBC's "Gardener's World", Percy Thrower left school at 14 to join his father who was head gardener at Horwood House, the palace of an immigrant banking family. He worked in the Royal Gardens in the Home Park at Windsor and in Prince Albert's model kitchen garden, which, until 1976, supplied all the royal households with vegetables. He soon revealed a particular talent for bringing flowers to a peak at a required time, which led to his being put in charge of the floral decorations for the Royal Enclosure at Ascot each year. He was responsible for reviving the status of gardening as one of Britain's favourite leisure activities, and the author, who is himself a landscape gardener and knew Percy Thrower, pays tribute here to an influential figure in the gardener's world.