Passed/Failed: An education in the life of Joe Swift, the garden designer and presenter of the BBC's Gardeners' World and Small Town Gardens

'I had an outdoor London childhood'

Joe Swift, 44, has been a presenter of Gardeners' World for 10 years. He is the son of the actor Clive Swift and the novelist Margaret Drabble. He also presents programmes about the Chelsea and Hampton Court flower shows, and was the co-founder of the design company Modular Garden. His latest book, Joe's Allotment, was published by BBC Books in April.

I went to a Montessori nursery called Mrs Henson's up the road in Hampstead. It would have been a state school; my mum didn't believe in paying. I remember a big room with a lot of drawing and chaos and a bit of writing. My brother and sister were at New End Primary over the road, and the live-in au pair would pick us up and take us home.

I had a great time at New End Primary. I was pretty sociable. Hampstead was more bohemian, arty, with lots of squats; it wasn't about money then. There was a tiny little school garden and I remember planting some seeds and putting down paving stones. It was my first gardening, apart from with my mother and grandmother (we had a 40ft garden backing onto the garden of Keats's house in Keats Grove).

I was always good at art and whenever I got the opportunity I would do a drawing. In my last year, I spent a whole week doing a large painting of the page of the local A-Z on a wall. As a garden designer, I have to be able to work from plans and that might have started from this school project. When I was about 10, I used to go to Hampstead Heath and I loved that feeling of space and nature. It was a proper outdoor childhood.

I was not a bookish child compared to my brother and sister. I don't ever read enough: I haven't read my mum's The Pattern On The Carpet yet, but I have got her novel The Sea Lady on audio. This was a problem with my education when I got to William Ellis, a former grammar school moving to a mixed intake; my brother Adam was the first head boy when it became a comprehensive. It was an academic school, all about going to university.

I got seven O-levels but in the lower sixth I got glandular fever and was bed-ridden for a few weeks and knocked out for two or three months. I got a place at art college, which meant I didn't need my A-levels. I got a C in art and F in sociology.

I didn't turn up for the geography exam, which I felt bad about, because Mr Rose was the nicest teacher in the school. I was keen on geography and did quite well in the mock exams. I remember the field trip to the Lake District.

I only lasted a couple of terms at Sir John Cass's Foundation in Whitechapel. It was a wide-ranging foundation course: film-making, painting, sculpture but it got a bit serious – people were asking "Where are you going to do a degree?" – and I decided to break away. I was in a band and we were doing quite well and getting quite a lot of gigs. The band didn't last very long; they never do. I got a proper job in a landscaping company and really enjoyed it. It was busy, it was outdoors, it was creative.

When I was 25, I thought, "This is the time to go to college." The English Gardening School at the Chelsea Physic Gardens was like heaven on earth. It was the one course I actually finished!

I redesigned my mother's garden. I transformed it, actually. She deserves a nice garden. Joe's Garden came out at roughly the same time as The Pattern On The Carpet. My agent said, "Why don't you write a novel?" I said, "I don't want to write a novel; my mum writes novels!"