Stefan Buczacki

Dr. Stefan T. Buczacki is a British horticulturist, broadcaster and author.

After growing up in Duffield, Derbyshire, where he was educated at The Ecclesbourne School, he gained a first-class honours degree in botany at Southampton University, and a D.Phil. in forest science at Oxford, before starting a career in research for the Agricultural Research Council at the National Vegetable Research Station at Wellesbourne, Warwickshire. He gained an international reputation as a plant pathologist before leaving research to become a freelance author and broadcaster in 1984. [http://www.cmmol.net/stefan_buczacki.htm Stefan Buczacki at CMM] ] He now lives in Stratford-upon-Avon.

His subsequent broadcasting work included twelve years as a panel member and then chairman of "Gardeners' Question Time", contributing to over six hundred consecutive editions. He also devised and presented "The Gardening Quiz", on BBC Radio 4 and "Classic Gardening Forum" on Classic FM. He has also appeared frequently on British television embracing contributions to all five terrestrial channels and including Gardeners' World on BBC 2 as well as many series on satellite and regional stations. He is credited as Britain's second biggest selling gardening author, with about 50 books to his name on both gardening and natural history. His "Fauna Britannica" was an account of the entire wild animal life of the British Isles for which HRH the Prince of Wales wrote the Foreword. He has written for many national newspapers and magazines. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Biology, a Chartered Biologist, a founder Fellow of the Institute of Horticulture,a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London, Associate of the Royal Photographic Society, and Honorary Professor of Plant Pathology at Liverpool John Moores University. He is an authority on fungi and past-President of the British Mycological Society and was awarded the Society's Benefactor's Medal. He is a Fellow of CAB International, holds an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Derby and was installed as Pershore College's first Honorary Fellow in 2007. He also has an interest in modern British political history and is recognised internationally as an authority on Winston Churchill and his house at Chartwell, described in his book "Churchill and Chartwell".

Buczacki has been an outspoken critic of makeover gardening programmes on television believing it is more important to show people how to garden than to pretend to do it for them. Like his similarly outspoken friend Geoff Hamilton, his achievements have pointedly never been recognised by the Royal Horticultural Society. [Horticulture Week, 7 June 2007]

References

External links

* [http://stefanbuczacki.co.uk/profile.html Stefan Buczacki website]
* [http://www.pershoreforward.co.uk Pershore College Horticultural Employers' Group]