Background
He is the son and heir of Guy and Sarah Hart Dyke at the family seat of Lullingstone Castle, Eynsford, Kent.
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Tom Dyke
Edit ProfileEducation
Hart Dyke attended a state primary school in Eynsford and then transferred to Saint Michael"s School in Otford. He attended Stanbridge Earls in Hampshire until age seventeen and then entered Sparsholt College Hampshire, near Winchester, where he studied tree surgery and forestry.
Career
He is the designer of the located on the property. The World Garden contains approximately 8,000 species of plants, many collected by Hart Dyke from their native environments. He presented an episode of Great British Garden Revival in 2013.
Hart Dyke follows a tradition of Victorian and Edwardian British plant hunters, such as Francis Masson, who risked life and limb to acquire rare species of plant.
In 2000, Hart Dyke was kidnapped by suspected FARC guerrillas in the Darién Gap between Panama and Colombia while hunting for rare orchids, a plant for which he has a particular passion. He kept himself going by creating a design for a garden containing plants collected on his trips, laid out in the shape of a world map according to their continent of origin.
Tom wrote about his experiences in Colombia in his book, The story of his kidnapping ordeal was dramatised in the Sky1 documentary series "My Holiday Hostage Hell". On his return home, Hart Dyke put his design into practice within the walls of the family"s Victorian herb garden.
The story of the creation of The was the subject of a BBC2 6-episode series, "Save Lullingstone Castle" (KEO Films) in 2006.
This was followed by a second 6-episode series, "Return To Lullingstone Castle" on BBC2 in 2007. In May 2006, Hart Dyke managed to get an Australian Eucalyptus caesia plant (common name Silver Princess) to flower for the first time in the United Kingdom. He was inspired by orchids at his first school, Saint Michaels, Otford, Kent. Hart Dyke featured in the Public Broadcasting Service Nova programme in 2002, Orchid Hunter that documented his return to hunting rare orchids in dangerous terrain in another politically unstable area in Irian Jaya in the rainforests of Western New Guinea.
