Passed/Failed: An education in the life of Tom Hart Dyke, orchid hunter

'I kept going to see the orchids'

Tom Hart Dyke, 30, was kidnapped six years ago by guerrillas in Central America. He is currently featured with parents Sarah and Guy in the BBC2 series Save Lullingstone Castle as they struggle to keep their ancestral Kent home in the family. Tom is planning to create a garden in the shape of a map of the world to attract tourists.

On 16 March 2000, my sister's birthday, Colombian guerrillas kidnapped me and Paul Winder, a mountaineer, in Panama while we were looking for orchids. For nine months they dragged us all over the place. Once they had a mock execution: they got out their guns and said, "You've got five hours, mate." That was at 12 o'clock. I opened my diary and started drawing my dream garden for Lullingstone. At five o'clock on the dot they came back. I closed my eyes. I opened one eye. I opened the other eye. No guns, just the evening meal: squashed armadillo.

After nine months they said, "Go away, get lost or we'll shoot you." We got lost and had to go back to the guerrillas for a map. They gave us money; they paid to get rid of us.

Lullingstone is my family house - 1361 or something - and me and Gran live in the gatehouse. (I used to live in the main house.) She got me interested in plants at a young age - three - when she gave me a packet of carrot seeds and a trowel. I went to a primary in Eynsford, a state school, and then I was able to go to St Michael's, a private school down the road in Otford, because an uncle died and left some money for the education of my sister and me.

When I talk about that school, though, I find I'm referring to plants a lot, not people. I kept sneaking out of the classroom to see the orchids, which grew - out of bounds - on a south-facing chalk slope. I was on hands and knees but the headmaster could see me.

I was hopeless at the Common Entrance exams. I didn't even come close to passing. I wasn't even in one of the exams: the orchids were flowering.

We tried to find the next school for me to go to but no one would talk to me. At Gordonstoun, I was told: "You do need some sort of exams." At Stowe, I asked the head about their "fly orchids" and he said no, they didn't have any, but I knew they did.

At Stanbridge Earls School, near Romsey in Hampshire, the headmaster, Mr Moxton, must have had in his mind the thought: "We can turn this around." He could see that I was interested in plants. I asked what orchids they had and he showed me some Spotted and also Early Marsh orchids. He said: "We'll give it a go."

The first two years weren't brilliant, even so. I was predicted dreadful grades: all "fails" apart from a couple of passes. Then I thought, "I failed in my first schools," and I now had to prove to myself - not to my parents, who were so laid-back - that I could do these exams. I managed to control myself when the sap was rising in late spring and early summer; I wasn't going out to see the orchids in the grounds during class time. As a result, I left school with 10 GCSEs and two AS-levels.

I left at 17, a year early. Sparsholt College, near Winchester, changed everything. There were all sorts of brilliant people there, from a guy who owned half of Nottingham - to a guy who didn't! I studied tree surgery and forestry, a year apiece, and worked as a tree surgeon for two years and saved up the money to go abroad.

I never went to university. My university was going away. I won't recommend some of the parts of the world I went to, though; you might not come back.

jonty@jonathansale.com