the cultivation of house plants. He introduced the use of bottle gardens to the UK, and in 1956 exhibited the first ever bottle garden at the Chelsea Flower Show. He was editor for just four years; in 1971 he left to devote his time to book writing and freelance journalism. The post of editor was taken over by assistant editor Peter Wood, who had been a student at the RHS garden at Wisley in the early 1950s, and had come to Amateur Gardening straight after his diploma course finished. He started off in the department helping to answer the thousands of readers' queries that arrived by post each year. During his editorship, Wood steered the magazine through the technological revolution (the introduction of computers) and the turbulent periods of industrial unrest in the 1970s. There were several times when Amateur Gardening was printed with blank white pages, when the printers refused to deal with pages that had been written by, or contained pictures from people who were not members of specific trade unions. Wood also presided over the magazine's centenary celebrations in 1984. With garden designer Roger Sweetinburgh, he drew up the plans for a Victorian garden at the Chelsea Flower Show – and won a Gold Medal for it. There was also a centenary lunch at RHS Wisley Garden, with a ceremonial tree-planting. It was a much lower-key event than the 50th birthday celebrations, but this was the recession-hit Thatcher era. Budgets for big parties were tighter. In 1979, Wood was instrumental in moving the magazine out of London, to Poole in Dorset. Recent years Wood retired from the magazine in 1985, and was replaced by Jack Kendall, a journalist who worked on Practical Householder (a sister magazine to Amateur Gardening). He was not an experienced gardener, but was a good organiser and writer. Shortly after he started, Kendall was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and he died just 10 months later. For much of the time Kendall was being treated for cancer, the magazine's deputy, Graham Clarke, had been acting editor, and upon Kendall's death he was appointed editor. Clarke had been born into horticulture as his father had been a Superintendent (today known as a Manager) of Regent's Park in the centre of London. For all of Clarke's childhood he had lived in a lodge within the Queen Mary Rose Garden. When a teenager, he and his family