Simon Goodenough, who died on 27th of January 2025, was a knowledgeable, enthusiastic and dedicated plantsman, RHS Judge and Tender Plant Committee member. Although much of his working life was spent within organisations, he pushed boundaries with his innovative, often unorthodox ideas and irrepressible energy. Simon also had a boundless enthusiasm for life and horticulture, relished every challenge and possessed a mischievous sense of fun.

Simon, born in Malta in 1955 and the only child of Enid and Geoffrey Goodenough, soon became a man of the world, his father’s postings in the Ministry of Defence taking him to several countries including West and East Africa, Mauritius, the Seychelles and most memorably Singapore. He was taught at military schools, by tutor. At Ealing Grammar School, he developed a love of rugby and played at a high level until this was curtailed by injury. A degree in geology at University of London from 1974, was followed by employment on ship, surveying oilfields in the North Sea.

He also immersed himself in the music scene of that era, with a notable weekend on the Isle of Wight, aged 15, for Jimi Hendrix’s last performance – his parents thought he was at a scout camp in the New Forest. He later advised Beatle George Harrison on his garden at Friar Park and met some of his ‘friends’.

A brief period at London Zoo caring for primates changed his life, when on a multidisciplinary field trip to Sumatra, he was inspired by one of the botanists to take up horticulture (it also resulted in a broken collarbone inflicted by a jealous Orangutang!). After budding roses at Geists, he became a trainee at the London Borough of Ealing Parks Department where he took his City and Guilds Certificates and the RHS general certificate before being accepted on the three-year diploma in horticulture at RBG Kew in September 1976, where he began his lifelong passion for Southern Hemisphere plants.

After completing his Diploma, Simon became a Gardener at RBG Kew, assisting in the landscaping and re-planting of the Temperate House and was actively involved in the horticultural restoration of the Palm House.

By 1981 he became Supervisor of the Temperate Nursery. It was during this time that Simon became immersed in the conservation and propagation of endangered species from island floras, visiting Socotra, Rodriguez and Reunion and becoming a leading light in plant conservation in St Helena. He stayed on the island for an extended period, collecting seed and plants for ex-situ conservation at Kew and set up a nursery on St Helena with the help of local conservationist George Benjamin BEM, training local people to propagate plants for reintroduction and oversee their re-establishment on the island. On one notable occasion, Simon, overcoming his fear of heights, lowering himself over a cliff to collect the last living Commidendrum robustum from its only known location, the rope anchored, somewhat precariously, to a large clump of invasive alien Phormium tenax.

On 1st August 1986, Simon became Curator of the newly established Ventnor Botanic Garden with his Canadian wife Debs, who he met at RBG Kew as an international student, as manager of the new Nursery which began restocking the gardens. The garden, renowned for its mild microclimate and subtropical plant collection was almost immediately rocked by the coldest winter for decades and two great storms, including the loss of 400 trees in 1987 storm, which devastated the garden. Undeterred, Simon immediately saw this as an exciting opportunity to revitalise the garden with naturalistic planting, and with great foresight and enthusiasm, aided by his staff and Friends of Ventnor Botanic Garden, the outstanding Mediterranean, Australian, New Zealand, South Africa and North American Gardens were created. During his 25 years as Curator, not one area of the 22-acre garden escaped his creative attentions. In July 2024 Simon and Debs were awarded the Sir Harold Hillier Award for their contributions to horticulture on the Isle of Wight.

From 2011-16 Simon became Curator at the National Botanic Garden of Wales, raising its standards of excellence and turning his vision and passion to the restoration of the newly rediscovered 18th century picturesque landscape. In 2015 his services to horticulture were recognised in the prestigious RHS Associate of Honour award.

Simon’s final career move, from 2016-2023, was to take up what he described as his ‘dream job’ – Estate Manager at Folly Farm, an illustrious Lutyens house whose extensive gardens were originally designed by Gertrude Jekyll. With a generous budget, sympathetic and enthusiastic employer, he devoted his energy, creativity and flair to the project, despite his advancing metastatic prostate cancer.

On retiring to his home at Chillerton on the Isle of Wight, Simon maintained his wide horticultural contacts, entertaining visitors and friends to his garden and was working on a thesis on the development of the landscape of the Island at the time of his death.

Simon, who had a perpetual ‘twinkle in his eye’, overflowed with self-motivation, innovative ideas and contagious energy. One of life’s great characters, he enjoyed Morris Dancing with the Men of Wight, had a large collection of Doc Martens and experimented with hormone weedkillers as rooting liquid on plants that had previously proved impossible to propagate, with varying degrees of success.

At one memorable Kew Mutual Improvement Society (KMIS) meeting, Simon, who arrived with a palm inflorescence over 10 feet long as his ‘Item of Interest’, clambered onto the laboratory bench to hold it upright, before extolling its virtues, having calculated that there were over one million flowers on the palm. The Kew student trips which he organised were also legendary.

During his last year, he found pleasure in gardening with Debs at home, visits from friends and family to talk horticulture past and present. Simon died surrounded by his loving family and under the tender care of Mountbatten, the local Hospice, where he had created a wonderful garden which continues to provide solace for others.

Simon is survived by his wife, Debs, his four children and six grandchildren. His memory lives on in conserved species, improved gardens and the fond and happy memories in our hearts.