BOB FLOWERDEW has a passion for gardening and a foolproof method of getting the next generation to share it.

"Get a load of strawberry varieties and have a tasting day. When a child says, I like that one, give him a root of that variety to grow. Then you've got him for life."

A way to a man (or woman's) gardening heart it seems, is through his or her stomach. According to Flowerdew lore, that is.

For spend even five minutes with the king of the organic garden and you'll be in no doubt. Some gardeners live to grow beautiful things. This man, it seems grows to have fragrance, form, oh and yes, something to eat.

"A packet of seeds these days is over a pound - that's still less than the price of a round of drinks. When people say to me, `I want my children to be interested in gardening,' I say get a fruit cage. They'll soon have to put a padlock on it!".

Bob cuts a distinctive figure in his white jeans and jacket, his trademark plait neatly tied off and snuggling over his right shoulder.

He's a no-nonsense farmer's son who made his name on gardening shows preaching the organic bible and recycling anything that came to hand in a style of gardening that was as productive as it was economic.

You suspect that that is very much how he gardens at home, near Diss in Norfolk.

It is a part of the country where his family has worked the land since pre-Elizabethan times.

He grew up on a mixed farm in a house which had no electricity, no toilet, no water and certainly no phone.

But rather than dwell on what many of us would feel was a spartan lifestyle, he talks about lessons learned working on the land as a child.

"You used to have to hoe out the surplus beet from the crop. I used to be out in the field and there would be this old retired horseman bent double - and he'd be a hundred yards in front of me!

"He'd put a handful of tobacco in his mouth and a paper and out would come a cigarette. And he used to sharpen his hoe with a carborundum stone.

"I've got the yellow finger nails and the cough but I never got to an ounce of tobacco a day like he did."

What Bob did get was the benefit of what to some might seem like the old-fashioned idea of using a stone to sharpen a hoe.

"I talk to a lot of gardeners and how many of them sharpen their hoes? Most of them have been using blunt hoes - it doesn't take much to put an edge on one but they presumably don't do it because no-one's ever pointed it out."

Bob's in his element, talking horticulture, much of it learned from experience on his travels, from extensive reading (he devours books on the subject and meticulously compares and weighs other gardeners' views) and from his own graft.

He trained in financial management and after graduating, took off into the wider world.

It must have seemed a long way from Norfolk on occasions when he found himself doing the myriad jobs anyone who travels can end up doing.

The list is long and diverse. The ones that stand out are dog impersonator and housboy and cook in a house of ill-repute. Don't ask? Well I did.

The dog impersonator is straight forward.

"I had a friend who had a model agency who offered me work. Did you know there's more work for good hands and feet than faces?"

As it happens, Bob wasn't in demand for any of those.

"I was asked if I would dress up as a dog. So I said, does it pay?"

The answer was clearly yes because Bob found himself yapping his way through a series of events to entertain children.

And the house of ill-repute? It's a roundabout story but one that does have a certain logic.

"I love food and I love to cook. Often when I was travelling, people would get me to cook. I cooked my way round the world.

"I was travelling through America and I was asked if I would like to be a houseboy for these people who in return would show me around the area.

"It turned out that it was a house of ill-repute. But no, I didn't make my excuses and leave. I stayed for several weeks. I did the decorating and the cooking and they took me out and showed me around the area.

"As I travelled, I used to like looking at gardens - not botanical ones. I'm interested in looking over the garden fence and seeing what people grow.

"And in the derelict gardens, those plants which have survived there really teach you about what those plants like."

Another lesson was learned in the vineyards of France where Bob's love affair with vines (and presumably wine) really blossomed.

"I got my love of vines in France. I went back to the same farm for 12 years to pick grapes. I found someone who had won prizes for their wine and where the food was cooked by grandmother.

"I didn't speak French at school but you learn quickly when you have to use it every day."

That loves of vines is typical of a man who seems to grow everything on his Norfolk plot that our climate will allow - which means anything from bananas and pineapples to guavas.

And those strawberries that he is convinced will lead a new generation by the tastebuds to gardening?

"Anything for a strawberry crop. I'd sit there naked for that."