In Memory of Nick Gooderham

Last year I lost a very good friend, Nick Gooderham, to pancreatic cancer.  Nick ran a salad, vegetable and cut flower farm in Dartington, close to Totnes in Devon UK (pictured left).

He  was an instantly likeable man, kind and generous and humble with his knowledge. One of the things I liked about Nick was his sense of humor, he managed to be very sharp, yet very corny at the same time. At times I would find myself laughing out loud to a ridiculous comment he had made the day before.

I wrote the following obituary for Nick (see below) which appeared in the Totnes Times in the Autumn of last year.

There is a Just Giving page for Nick which you can donate money to Pancreatic Cancer UK or for residents of Devon (or those willing to travel) there will be a fund raising dinner on the 17th May in aid of the same charity.

In Memory of Nick Gooderham

Down a pot-holed lane, just down from Foxhole on the Dartington estate there lies a row of aging glasshouses and a well-tended market garden. Until recently, you’d often find the smiling face of Nicholas Gooderham happily going about his business amongst the flowers and vegetables.

Nick was the first to move back into School Farm and in 2007 he began the process of breathing life back into what had become neglected corner of the Dartington estate. In the Autumn of 2009 Schumacher college teamed up with the Duchy college in Cornwall to use Nick’s farm and expertise on their level 2 course in sustainable horticulture. It was here, like many others since, I first came across Nick when I was a student on the course. He was an excellent teacher, not once did I even hear him raise his voice, and there was never a hint of superiority as he imparted his deep, rich knowledge of plants and horticulture (if anything the reverse was true!).

Nick worked in horticulture for most of his life, by the time I had met him he’d done everything from a jobbing gardener and groundsman to a nurseryman and trials manager at Sutton seeds. Perhaps this history of working outdoors led him to be a man in tune with the rhythms of the natural world. Every year I knew him, he would wait in anticipation, as a child does for Christmas, for the swallows to arrive back from their winter in Africa. Sadly, this year was to be the last time he was to see them arrive as in February Nick had the tragic news that his pancreatic cancer had returned. On hearing the news, Nick decided do what he always wanted to do and travel. He did so on a handful of separate holidays with his long-term partner Deena and then with his daughter India. By the end of the summer, Deena had become Nick’s wife and as the swallow took flight to return to Africa, on the 29^th September, Nick passed away peacefully in his own bed.

Nick was a kind and giving man, gladly helping anyone he saw in need, often at his own expense. He had a gentle humour saw the light side of any situation; when rabbits constantly confounded his efforts to keep them out of his vegetables he would joke that they had mastered the Fosbury flop and were high jumping over the fence.

School farm is still thriving as he has left a legacy of horticultural businesses; a Community Supported Agriculture scheme now runs from the site (School Farm CSA) along with School Farm Cut Flowers and Sarah Coates’ business selling salads and vegetable plants.

It is perhaps testament to how hard Nick worked and how skilled a horticulturist he was that three businesses have moved in to take the place of this one man.

Nick was a one off; he will be missed deeply by many in Totnes and elsewhere in the world.

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