Geoff Garderner's passion for plants has netted him a successful career, many friends and a new love. Liz Lamb meets the man who lives up to his name.

DAFFODILS and dahlias have changed Geoff Gardener's life. The 58-year-old divorcee has forged a successful career, found love and made friends across the country, all because of his passion for plants.

Hundreds of trophies, medals, tankards and certificates adorn his home in Clifton Road, Darlington, a testament to 30 years of successful gardening.

Over the years, he has built up a steady reputation as a champion gardener and horticulture expert, helping gardening novices with everyday conundrums.

Neighbours and allotment holders think nothing of knocking on his front door and asking advice and Geoff is only too willing to give a helping hand.

Scrapbooks filled with newspaper cuttings chronicling his career are close to hand in his living room. His achievements may have varied over the years, but the headlines remain the same. Gardener Lives Up To His Name, and Gardener By Name, Gardener By Nature, they read. "They always write that," laughs Geoff, "I suppose it's true though. I do have a knack for it."

Geoff has his father to thank for giving him green fingers. Growing up in the 1950s in Waldridge Fell, a mining village near Chester-le-Street, was when he first started to show an interest in horticulture. Like many families at the time the Gardeners would grow vegetables and flowers to boost their earnings.

"People had allotments to supplement their income and we would grow vegetables and flowers for decoration," says Geoff. "My father didn't enter shows but he was a tremendous gardener in his own right. I got it all from him."

When he was nine years old, Geoff would spend his spare time at Waldridge Hall, near Chester-le-Street, where his mother worked as a housekeeper. Every day after school he would go there to work with the cattle and play on the tractors. It fuelled an interest in outdoor life and, when he left school in 1959, Geoff, aged 15, started work as a general farm worker.

He enjoyed the great outdoors but, lured by a better wage, Geoff went to work in the pits for seven years.

"I got to an age where I wanted to play football and I was interested in meeting girls," he says. "I was not on a big wage at the time and most of my friends were in the mines and they were doing all right. I decided to leave farming to go into the pits, but in 1966, when the mine closed, I went back into farming."

Geoff started a day release at Houghall College, Durham, then worked for ten years as a farm manager in Stapleton, near Darlington, and, other than a brief spell in an office, he has spent most of his career outdoors. "I was not cut out to work inside," he says. "I took early retirement."

Geoff has always been fascinated with flowers. "In my youth I can remember being interested in vivid colours and the different forms and shapes," he says. "That led on to growing and exhibiting them."

"When I was working I would come in from a hard day's work and I would go from one world of hard graft to total relaxation and unwinding. It was hard work, but it used to give me a lot of pleasure and it still does."

These days, Geoff's time is spent flitting between his four Darlington allotments. At his side, is his partner of four years, Dorothy Peers, 63. The pair met through their mutual love of gardening. Dorothy was a flower art fan and would often see Geoff tending his flowers at the allotment close to hers.

"I couldn't do it without Dorothy," Geoff says. "She gives me a lot of support. We have to make sacrifices. It is a real team effort."

Geoff is a member and judge of the National Dahlia society and he was a member of Darlington Chrysanthemum and Dahlia society from 1980 to 1996. He competes every year at the three main national flower shows and this year he entered a prize daffodil in the Gateshead flower show for the first time and won.

"Gardening is a gift you have either got it or you haven't. My son thinks that it is an obsession, which I suppose it is," says Geoff. "None of my family has lost out because of it, I have always looked after them and provided for them. Gardening has never been first and foremost but it has taken over my life.