Bridgerton's Lady Danbury (AKA Adjoa Andoh) talks gardening, growing and more

Which of the beautiful Bridgerton locations stands out to you as a favourite?

I don't have a favourite. I know that sounds lazy. I don't, because I really love stately home gardens. I grew up in the Cotswolds in the 1960s and 70s. And, I lived in a tiny cow and sheep village, everybody was about their garden. And, there were also very posh people who lived in our village. And once a year they would open their palatial gardens for the summer fate. And, the hoi polloi we would all marvel at their topiary and floral beds.

We'd get a cream tea, go on the tombola, and then we'd be sent on our way. So, I've grown up loving stately home gardens. Now I get to do a show where I'm basically living in my love a great deal of the year.

We have amazing gardeners. There was a scene, in Queen Charlotte where Lady Vi and Lady Agatha are tramping around a garden with aviaries and topiary and floral beds. And I saw the transformation that the gardeners did to make that look as dazzling as it does. The work they do is astonishing!

I find it very heartening and encouraging because however dreadful your life may be, the bluebells will still come up in March.

I love gardens. I love nature. I love trees. I'm a patron of an organisation called Tree Aid. That's how much I love trees, and I like to see them in all the different seasons. There isn't a bad season. There's always something fabulous to look at in nature.

I find it very heartening and encouraging because however dreadful your life may be, the bluebells will still come up in March.

You're quite a keen gardener, how is your garden looking now?

Keen but haphazard. My mother and my grandmother and my aunts in Ghana actually are all spectacular gardeners. So my mum's in her 80s and I drag her down to my house to do my pruning. And mum always says, "prune your roses as if they belong to your worst enemies."

I grew up in a cottage garden, so I love tea roses, I love peonies, I see a primrose and my heart sings, and when the crocuses are coming out, when all the different seasonal bulbs arrive, I like seeing the seasons through what appears, My garden at the moment, if I do say to myself, it looks pretty fabulous.

It looks the best it looks all year now because the bluebells are up. All the daffodils are over, but the tulips are up. The hyacinths are still kind of hanging on in there. The peonies are coming into their own. I bought a crab apple tree, because I love the blossom. You get that 10 day window after waiting all year and it's like, and there it is!

Where do you garden, is it a city space?

This is my garden in Brixton in South London, it's a stepped garden. It used to be a lawn and then we had a dog... goodbye lawn! Then we had pea gravel and central trees and all that sort of thing. I love maples. So I've got maples in there as well and fig trees.

You've spoken about the effects of loneliness before. When we garden, we're often alone, but we might not feel it. We might find solace in the solitude. Is that something you've experienced?

Solace in the soil.

Our house is one of those 1960 townhouses that were thrown up as a result of the Second World War bombing. So you'd have a Victorian terrace and then you'd have this great big garden. So when I first started digging over the garden, I found a whole cast iron grate, that the builders obviously had just chucked at the back and put a rockery over the top of it. The garden was full of these surprising, extraordinary bits of Victoriana furniture.

I find that I can spend eight or nine hours in the garden. I've got my ear pods in, I've got BBC Radio 4 on, I'm listening to a drama or a political programme or whatever, and it brings me great joy. I've got neighbours who are great gardeners as well, we have chats over the fence about "who's got what and can I have a bit of this or that."

This article is based on our chat with Adjoa Andoh on the BBC Gardeners World Magazine Podcast, explore here to listen to the whole episode, and to browse our archive.

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