Raymond Blanc: 'I was a gardener long before I cooked'

Chef Raymond Blanc was brought up to love gardening. Now he is launching a competition to help design a new heritage garden at his flagship restaurant.

Raymond Blanc stands in a patch of bare ground, flinging soil into the air with a fork. "This is where the new garden will be," he says. As with many Frenchmen who have found fame in Britain, his accent seems to become more entrenched with the passing years. "I am veree 'appy to show you!"

The new garden will be for heritage fruit and veg. It is one strand of the chef's mission to get us growing some of our own food and eating better: he is also supporting the RHS Britain in Bloom: Edible Britain campaign. The drive could hardly be more timely. Earlier this week a Consumer Price Index report showed that the price of a bag of potatoes has risen 43 per cent in a year, while Britain is about to become a net importer of wheat for the first time in a decade.

The photographer asks him to fling again. He does so obligingly, and keeps on doing it. On request, he grins like a maniac, poses with vegetables, chats to guests and finally climbs an enormous bronze artichoke, gesturing wildly all the while. Safe to say that after more than 30 years in the public eye, the chef, who is 63, has lost none of his appetite for the limelight.

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