Dannahue Barrington Clarke
A horticulturist and broadcaster, Clarke was the first Black person to present their own gardening show in the UK, The Instant Gardener. He continues to make broadcast appearances, most lately with Alan Titchmarsh on Love your Garden. He is co-director of Grow2Know, a CIC (community interest company) bringing gardening to young people and disadvantaged communities.
1956
UK – Oxford
Jamaican
1997 – created The Black Gardener, garden design company
2015 – 16 – presenter of The Instant Gardener
2019 – ITV This Morning team, presenting garden transformations.
2021 – Co-presenter of Filthy Garden SOS on Channel 5
In a 2020 interview with Alex James for What’s Your Story, Clarke described how his parents came to the UK in the 1950s from Jamaica. His father was in the army for 22 years, and that meant that the family travelled around, living in many places, including Wolverhampton, Germany and Malta.
Danny is the eldest of six children.
One of the schools Clarke attended in the 1970’s was Queen’s School, Rheindahlen, Germany, which provided secondary school facilities for the children in British Garrisons in the lower Rhineland.
He wanted to be a professional footballer and pursued this for a time, playing for the Charlton Athletic youth team. When that didn’t work out, in the early 80’s he started a business partnership selling drink vending machines.. Economic difficulties in the 1990’s meant the business began to suffer and Clarke started working as a gardener, after a friend who had admired Clarke’s own garden mentioned him to Jo Bryant, their landlady. Danny worked for Bryant for three years, one day a week, until her death. Other clients soon followed until he founded his own business in Bromley, Kent in 1997, after completing a garden design course at Hadlow Horticultural college.
He attended a government run business course to discuss social media techniques. It was here that he got his idea of changing the name of his business to The Black Gardener, as he had seen The Black Farmer on TV. This raised his profile, so that three months later he was invited to interview for The Instant Gardener (2015) and was selected, becoming the first Black lead presenter of a TV show in the UK. Since then, he has made frequent TV appearances, most notably on This Morning, and as co-presenter on C5’s Filthy Garden SOS.
He has presented at RHS Chelsea and RHS Tatton for the BBC. He was a panellist on C4’s Tree of the Year programme, and regularly writes for Waitrose’s Weekend magazine. He has appeared on numerous ‘celebrity charitable editions of popular TV programmes.
He is an Ambassador for The Woodland Trust, and for Brain Tumour Research. He supports Blue Cross for Pets and is a co-director of Grow2Know, with Tayshan Hayden Smith
Clarke has a daughter and two grandchildren and currently resides in Bromley, Kent.
He currently lives in a top floor flat with no garden of his own.
https://theBlackgardener.co.uk/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Clarke
Credits (where info sourced from)
https://www.gardenersunearthed.com/2020/05/danny-clarke.html
http://priceless-magazines.com/gardens/the-instant-gardener/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07dwtt0
https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/officers/MiTFvEQz4_d801gZjFfl5HJnSOk/appointments
https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/about-us/working-with-us/our-people/our-ambassadors/
