Gardeners’ World host Adam Frost reveals parents being swingers reason he left home at 16

Gardeners’ World host, Adam Frost, has made a shocking revelation about his parents and the reason he left home at 16. The 55-year-old opened up about his childhood during a podcast over the weekend.

Best known as a presenter on the long-running BBC horticultural show, the garden designer Adam is admired in the industry for his award-winning designs - including his seven gold medals at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show.

The down-to-earth TV host was born in Harlow in Essex but moved with his family to North Devon at the age of 15. He lost interest in school, eventually leaving home to start working.

Speaking on Clive Anderson’s Radio 4 show, Loose Ends, Adam began by talking about his new live tour and book, For the Love of Plants, before it took a “darker” turn. He said: “I left school at 16 because I’d then moved from London to Devon, and at 16 years old, someone’s not going to like me saying this, but, my mum and dad decided to do a swap with another couple. So, they were all swapping couples, so I’ve gone, ‘nah, it’s not really for me,’ I left home, there you go.”

Causing much mirth in the studio with Clive and fellow guests Bridget Christie, Louise Young, Richard Dawson, and Abel Selaocoe, Adam added: “They got massively into 'village life’!”

He went on: “So, yeah I left home, and got a bedsit, and lucky enough, got a job on a parks department, and it was a real old parks department so we did everything. We grew 200,000 bedding plants, sites of special interest, Victorian parks, you even had to dig a grave, so you had to be a qualified grave digger.”

Adam now lives with wife Sulina Frost who he first met in the 1990s when Sulina was working as a manager at John Lewis. They share four children together, Abi-Jade, Jacob, Amber-Lily, and Oakley.

The couple, who also share a love of gardening, both had a health scare in 2022 when Sulina was hospitalised with sepsis and shortly afterwards Adam contracted COVID-19 before being diagnosed with depression. It was after that they decided to downsize from their large home in Barnack, Cambridgeshire to a farmhouse in Lincolnshire.

For The Love Of Plants by Adam Frost is published by DK, priced at £22. There are also still tickets left for his live tour of the UK via the Fane website.