Ringo Starr Said a Series of Gifts From George Harrison Helped Him Get Into Gardening
Ringo Starr and George Harrison collaborated musically for years, but they had shared interests far outside of writing and performing music. Harrison was an avid gardener — his wife said he would want to be remembered as this over a musician — and his keen interest drew in Starr as well. The Beatles drummer talked about the way a series of gifts from Harrison fostered an interest in gardening for him as well.
The Beatles guitarist was an avid gardener
In 1970, Harrison bought Friar Park, a sprawling estate in Henley-on-Thames, England. The mansion’s extensive grounds were what first interested Harrison in gardening. He threw himself into the hobby.
“He’d be like, ‘Get that pond, put it over there, and move that hill. Don’t like that hill,'” his son Dhani Harrison said in the documentary George Harrison: Living in the Material World. “And the next week, it would be pond over there, hill over there. And it would look better.”
Harrison felt more connected to his spirituality when he was in the garden. This was important to him, as he spent much of his life working to cultivate this side of himself.
“Being a gardener and not hanging out with anyone and just being home, that was pretty rock & roll, you know?” Dhani told Rolling Stone in 2011. “When you’re in a really beautiful garden, it reminds you constantly of God.”
George Harrison sparked an interest in gardening for Ringo Starr
Harrison’s love of gardening also convinced Starr to pick up the hobby.
“I like to remodel my garden,” he told the LA Times in 2003. “Well, it’s not like I dig the holes for the trees — that’s because I have gardeners — but we have this home in England where I’m completely redoing the landscape. And that came about because George has always been in my life. He started taking me around to all of these places that had great trees.”
Harrison sent Starr a series of gifts that further interested him in gardening. He appreciates that through Harrison’s gifts, he can pass something on to his great-grandchildren.
“Then he started buying me trees for presents,” he said. “I got really interested in it. Also in the fact that we’ll plant them now and the grandchildren’s children will actually see them. It’s to put something back.”
Ringo Starr and George Harrison were close friends and collaborators
Starr and Harrison were friends for years. In the early days of The Beatles, they were roommates, and went on to collaborate long after the band broke up. When Starr talks about his old friend, even decades after his death, he still gets choked up.
“I’m such an old crybaby,” Starr told Rolling Stone in 2019. “He’s laying there very ill — not long. And I’ve got to go to Boston, ’cause my daughter’s having an operation. And so I said, ‘Well, you know, I’ve got to go, George,’ and he says, ‘Do you want me to come with you?’ You know, he’s dying in a bit: ‘Do you want me to come with you?’ How many people say great things like that to you, really give themselves?”
