Background
Buczacki grew up in Duffield, Derbyshire, where he was educated at The Ecclesbourne School, he gained a first-class honours degree in botany at Southampton University, and a D.Phil.
Buczacki grew up in Duffield, Derbyshire, where he was educated at The Ecclesbourne School, he gained a first-class honours degree in botany at Southampton University, and a D.Phil.
University of Southampton.
In forest science at Linacre College, Oxford University, before starting a career in research for the Agricultural Research Council at the National Vegetable Research Station at Wellesbourne, Warwickshire. As a plant pathologist he worked on the biology and control of a species of Phytomyxea, Plasmodiophora brassicae, the cause of clubroot disease. He became a freelance author and broadcaster in 1984.
He lives in Stratford-upon-Avon.
His broadcasting work included twelve years as a panel member and then chairman of Gardeners" Question Time on British Broadcasting Corporation Radio 4, contributing to over six hundred consecutive editions. He devised and presented The Gardening Quiz, on British Broadcasting Corporation Radio 4 and Classic Gardening Forum on Classic FM. He has appeared frequently on British television embracing contributions to all five terrestrial channels, including Gardeners" World on British Broadcasting Corporation Two and a number of series on satellite and regional stations.
Buczacki is credited as Britain"s second biggest selling gardening author, with about 50 books to his name on both gardening and natural history. His first book Collins Guide to the Pests, Diseases and Disorders of Garden Plants, written jointly with Doctor Keith Harris, has remained the standard reference work for over thirty years, while his Fauna Britannica was an account of the entire wild animal life of the British Isles for which His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales wrote the Foreword.
He also wrote Volume 102 Garden Natural History for Collins"s New Naturalist series.
He has written for a number of national newspapers and magazines. Buczacki has been an outspoken critic of makeover gardening programmes on television, arguing that it is more important to show people how to garden than to pretend to do it for them. In September 2011 he criticised the British Broadcasting Corporation radio programme Gardeners" Question Time for having "lost its way".