The bird man of south Norfolk

First published in Let's Talk! Norfolk, Fireside Special, autumn 2004

Ben Potterton is a surprising sort of chap. For a start, you don't expect to meet a rising young star of the horticulture world and hear him confess, "I don't like gardening."

Surely this can't be true? This is a man whose Norfolk garden won a silver medal at this summer's Gardener's World Live in Birmingham. A man who grows around 4,000 species of plants in the field next to his home near Dickleburgh and has visitors from all over northern Europe who come just to buy a particular plant.

Yet still he insists, "I don't like selling plants - I love buying them."

There are other things Ben loves too, which is where the other big surprise comes in.

Demoiselle cranes on the lawn

Plenty of people have birds in their gardens. Not many have demoiselle cranes strolling about like officious park-keepers. Or oystercatchers pecking in the lawn. Or sacred ibis - those curve-billed birds so revered by the ancient Egyptians - looking about for scraps.

As we sit down just outside the kitchen door with a cup of tea, our talk is punctuated by strange whistling noises made by a South American black-necked swan.

Inevitably, a discussion that was to have been about flowers and garden shows turns instantly from plants to creatures.

The tall, elegant birds walking up the path are a natural starting-point.

"Cranes have become a real passion of mine," explains Ben. "We've got a good breeding stock.

"I've got several pairs of demoiselle cranes, which are doing really well. They breed throughout Asia and into Europe and Africa . There's lots of them, but they all winter in the semi-desert in India , where there's a lot of things like DDT used. So the birds are threatened because they gather en masse in a few dodgy areas.

"I'm the UK co-ordinator for breeding of the white-necked crane, which is one of the rarest cranes in the world. We've got a good stock now of white-necked cranes and I'm thinking of sending them back to the wild in the Far East . And we've got Japanese cranes, which is the second rarest crane in the world."

At this point, it crosses my mind - is it all right to mention in print the presence in rural Norfolk of all these wonderful birds?

"It's fine," Ben assures me. "It's a conservation thing, so there's no price on the birds. They're all microchipped and tagged, so if someone stole one there's no real value to it.

Crowned crane

"What would you do with it? If you wanted a mate for it, you'd really have to phone up to try to get one. And that would mean coming right back to me.

"People might see you bred so many swans this year and they phone up and say 'Can we have them?' And you have to say, 'No, they're not for sale.' We don't sell any birds.

"I'm the unofficial European co-ordinator for a bird called the blue-bellied roller, which basically means if you've got one anywhere in Europe and you're looking for a partner to breed with, you email me and I find you one.

"All the blue-bellied rollers in British and French zoos, and Berlin Zoo, are ours and we've donated them."

In fact, most of the birds and other animals Ben owns are out on more-or-less permanent loan to zoos in various parts of England and Europe . Of course, he likes to visit them.

"It's nice to go somewhere like the Cotswold Wildlife Park , Whipsnade or London Zoo, and see your stock there.

"You know that, rather than just being a pet, your bird is part of a conservation project helping to conserve the species.

"It means I'm away a lot in the winter. This winter my girlfriend and I went to Europe and looked at all the zoos we were working with.

"Next week I've got a meeting with the Royal Horticultural Society in London and I'll go to the zoo in the morning, because it's nice to have lunch there and then go to my meeting in the afternoon."

Black-necked swan with oystercatchers

Despite all this travelling, you somehow get the feeling that where Ben likes to be best of all is right here at home in Norfolk . And he's still got plenty of feathered company.

"We have a few things here that have various problems and will be here for the rest of their lives. We have a goose that's too tame - he's 26 years old and will go on forever. There's a magpie goose (an Australian species) that had frostbite and can't go to a zoo, who will probably be here for 30 or 40 years."

I hadn't realised that keeping birds like geese was such a lifetime commitment.

Ben explains, "Geese are supposed to live for anything from 25 to 50 years. One of my cranes is over 35. I know a chap who's got a crane that's just bred at 60."

Of course, the birds bring a lot of pleasure as well as a few problems - and some funny moments.

"We used to have a big flock of sacred ibis - they've always done very well here. A few years ago we had a break-in and two got nervy in the night and flew away.

"One was living in the Waveney valley, causing a major stir. One went to Felixstowe, where the RSPCA reported it as having arrived on a boat from Egypt . It now lives at Colchester Zoo.

"The whooper swans have just come back from London Zoo, where they had a problem with foxes.

"It can be horrifying when things come back. I've got a herd of antelope that live in Oxfordshire. They're fine, but if there's a problem at the zoo they could phone and want them to come back immediately and then it's like, 'Oh, no, where are we going to put them?'

"But we're going to have quite a bit of development here this winter and some of the birds will be coming back.

"We're going to have black storks. There are only a handful in Britain , part of a European breeding programme. They're quite rare - they live in the cork woods of Spain - and it would be nice for people to see these things.

"So hopefully we're going to open up that part of the site so people can wander round."

There are already some rather exotic sights to liven up a visit to the nursery.

Perhaps the most striking are the crowned cranes. There are also a number of mara, or South American hares, who have dug their way under some of the gates. "They don't jump or anything, they just sit around and graze, but it's quite interesting having them around the place," says Ben fondly.

There are rare Hungarian screw-horned sheep, and some delightfully friendly Somalian black-headed sheep. Rather than wool, they have short hair like a dog's. They will have a stable for the winter, because they don't cope very well in cold English weather.

So how exactly does a "townie" boy from Southend grow up to be so involved with wild things? It's still a bit of a mystery to Ben himself.

"I don't know how it happened, because neither of my parents particularly liked plants or animals, but I always have done.

"My grandparents lived in a rural part of Essex and I went there for holidays. It was lovely to be able to run around in the fields, catching snakes and stuff.

"My parents indulged me from a very early age. I kept tropical butterflies and all sorts of reptiles and birds.

"I pushed my parents to move here (the tiny hamlet of Langmere, near Dickleburgh) because of all the land. I could go into livestock more. I started with chickens and ducks. We kept every type of pure-bred chicken in England here while I was still at school.

"After that I went to Easton College in Norwich . When I left I went to a careers evening and said I wanted to work with poultry. I was thinking of rare-breed poultry, and they were thinking of thousands in sheds.

"I decided there was nothing for me in that line. I didn't want to work in a zoo. It would drive me mad working with a small group of species - I wanted to work with everything.

So I decided to work in horticulture.

"I realised I didn't want to make a living out of animals, so the plants have paid my wages, and the animals have been a hobby. But nowadays it's got a bit out of hand.

"Zoo people, sat in an office paid to do their job, don't seem to realise. They think I'm always on the end of a phone.

"We did some work with the RSPB. They were having problems with one of the only pairs of black-tailed godwits bred on the Ouse Washes reserve. They'd abandoned their eggs and the RSPB were asking my advice on how to rear them. They were phoning up four or five times a day on my mobile while I was at Hampton Court Flower Show. I was trying to sell flowers and advise the RSPB on how to rear these birds at the same time.

"It turned out quite nice, because two were put back in the wild, of which one joined the Welney flock and will probably come back to breed in the marshes of East Anglia."

Ben's birds also caused a bit of a stir at the Gardener's World Live show, where his traditional Norfolk garden was one of the real talking-points.

The show is officially a Royal Horticultural Society event, but of course BBC television provides the cash and draws the crowds - and Ben's plans caused a rift between the two.

He explains, "RHS policy is no livestock at any RHS shows. But I'm on the Norfolk and Norwich Horticultural Society committee and we're trying to do something with schools, involved with the Norfolk Show.

"Lots of schools in the county now have chickens. My old high school in Harleston has a building full of chickens and the children get involved. Kids have become too computer-orientated and too modern, and chickens are their link back to the past.

Part of Ben Potterton's Norfolk Garden at the 2004 Gardeners' World Live show in Birmingham

"So I thought we'd like to get chickens involved in our Norfolk garden. The BBC wanted them - the RHS officials tried to over-rule them, but the BBC said, 'We've got the money. We're having chickens.'

"We were going to use Norfolk greys, but, bless 'em, though they're a nice bird, they're fairly dull. Then we had a mother silky hatch out eight chicks.

"People were worrying about the welfare of the chickens - the heat and the stress. The silky, being an Asian bird, is able to cope with heat. Its feathers are very fine.

"The reaction we had to the chickens was incredible. Even before the show, the security men were coming every night to feed them. If I was selling chickens, I'd have done a roaring trade!"

When I stopped by Ben's stall in the NEC marquee, he didn't seem to be doing a bad trade in flowers. In fact, he always seems to be busy.

But Let's Talk about plants another time. Surprise though it was, this visit to Langmere is strictly for the birds.

Well, as Ben says, "It's nice to have a hobby, because I hate gardening."