Aloe Mark!
I’ll be honest with you, I met Mark from The Green House at the Ypres Castle Inn beer garden and not his plant shop, I can confirm that he is a first class drinking buddy.
Mark, sat out at the back of The Green House, in Needles Passage.
What’s your background and what led to you moving to Rye?
Mark. I was born in West Yorkshire, close to Leeds and lived there until I was 14. My parents divorced when I was two, so I don’t remember them being together. My dad is German and moved back to Germany. My mother remarried, and my stepfather worked for the Post Office that then became British Telecom. When he got promoted, the job was in Hertfordshire, so we moved. Hertfordshire was too expensive, so they bought a house in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire. So I’ve lived in the South for a long time, which is why I don’t have a Leeds accent anymore; peer pressure and I’ve always been a natural mimic. We lived there for a few years until I flunked out of school halfway through my A-Levels. I managed to get a job as a bookkeeper in London; I was pretty good with numbers. I did a couple of other jobs; I worked in sales for a while, and then I met some people that got me involved in visual effects in nightclubs and big parties in London in the late eighties and early nineties - that was a lot of fun. I started making animations, scratching it into celluloid, and colouring it in with pens under a microscope, things like that. It eventually got to the point where I couldn’t carry on with that lifestyle; it was pretty challenging.
So I went to stay with my dad in Germany; I lived there for a year and worked in bars and learned the language. A friend then told me she was moving to Amsterdam to do hair and makeup and invited me over to visit. It was only a couple of hours away, so I got on the train. I thought, this is a fun place to live, so I moved.
That’s when I got involved in the building thing for a few years; I was pretty good with my hands. There is a lot of work in Amsterdam, as there is a lot of rundown property, so I got involved. Then I met my wife to be, and she didn’t want to live in Holland, so we moved back to England, back to Buckinghamshire, not far from where I started. I carried on with the building work for a while, set up home and had a family.
Then we moved to Hertfordshire; we separated; I had the kids to look after, so I decided the building thing wasn’t working anymore. I always liked working with children so I thought maybe I could be a teacher. I went for an interview, and they told me they thought I’d be good at it. So I did a degree in Primary Education, which went very well and I was a teacher for 12 years.
During that time I met Georgina. We got on very well and got together. She was living in Greenwich at the time, which wasn’t much of a commute from St Albans, but when she relocated to this area and bought the Rye Health Store, and my own children finished their schooling and went off to University, I took the decision to join her here.
“Of course, Georgina is the brains behind it all, if it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t be here, and there wouldn’t be The Green House. She is the driving force behind it all.”
Georgina had always had an interest in antiques; her father was an antiques dealer. She met someone with a mutual interest in interiors, so they decided to open a shop on Cinque Ports Street. I was employed to make the place look good. I already had a few ideas about how it should look and, together we came up with a look for the shop. I suppose after investing time in making the shop look good I became wedded to it and I was also available to man the shop. Georgina thought that having plants in the shop would enhance the interior and found a really good local grower who agreed to work with us. It soon became apparent that people wanted the plants and I also realised that I liked being in that environment - plants are fascinating.
After a few months the partnership split and Georgina and I decided to set out on our own with a new shop. We found a great premises on The Mint and we could see it had amazing potential. I’ve got a good way of 3D visualising, imagining how the place could look. So we took it on, and with Georgina’s eye guiding me, I spent six weeks making it look as it does today.
Georgina at Rye Health Store, 90 High Street, Rye TN31 7JN
From your time in that previous shop until today, is this when you’ve found your love for plants?
Mark. I suppose my years in education got me interested in a lot of things; as a Primary School teacher, you study many subjects, and you learn about a lot of different things, including taking your pupils on field trips, studying plants and trees. Being a slightly geeky kind of character that is interested in many subjects I quickly became fascinated by names, origins and families of all the different plants. Plants can be very exotic and exciting, and they push my geek button; I’m intrigued by them, they have an aesthetic that appeals to me. When I see a room now without a plant in it I think it looks somehow naked and cold. My first thought is what plant would suit a particular space. For instance when I first visited Tillingham I loved it but I thought this place needs some plants. Luckily Ben agreed!
I suppose that I hadn’t paid much attention to plants in my youth, but I had a friend who I have since realised influenced me. When I was around the age of 22, 23, a friend, Danny, had a property in West Hampstead. It was an old barn that had been converted and he filled it with exotic plants. You would see banana trees, huge palms and things everywhere. He always played birdsong and jungle sounds in his home, which made me feel very comfortable. So I suppose I feel very comfortable in that environment now. It makes me happy.
Inside The Green House.
You’ve mentioned living in many places; with that in mind, tell me about living in Rye?
Mark. I like the pace of life in Rye. When you have lived in a busy city, for example, London, Liverpool, Leeds, even St. Albans, the difference here is you can almost live a life in a day. Because everything is so accessible, you can do so much more. I felt that too when I lived in Amsterdam. I felt very comfortable there because it is a small city and you can get from one place to another quickly; you can do a lot in a day. Whereas when you are in a big city, it’s almost like there’s so much to do that you end up doing nothing. That’s part of the appeal. Also the location. It’s such a beautiful place and the climate here! I remember first moving into the house; it was October, and it was 22 degrees. I was outside working on the garden. I thought this is crazy, and I asked my neighbour, is it always like this here? She said, yeah, pretty much! It’s almost like being in a foreign country. Everything is so easy to get to; the beach is a 10-minute drive away or even a walk away. There is the beautiful countryside, all the Sussex pubs, which I love. Going to a pub is what I missed the most when I was abroad for six years, an English pub. There’s nothing else like it.
I don’t like using this expression but part of Rye’s charm is it is old fashioned. When I say old fashioned, I mean something that has endured through time because it is appealing. It’s all about enjoyment and environment, food and drink, having a good time together socially. There’s a lot of social interaction with people; going out, talking, and that’s a beautiful thing about Rye - it feels very natural. Everybody is friendly and working together, trying to achieve something, to create an environment that everyone can enjoy. I’ve never experienced it anywhere else. I suppose, without reverting to cliches, it is about community. The draw for me working in the retail environment is to meet different people; there are some real characters in this town; it’s almost like a heightened reality, maybe because there aren’t many people, so the ones that you meet, you get to know better. Sometimes I feel like I am in the Sussex equivalent of The Truman Show. That is what it feels like sometimes - Good morning, and in case I don’t see ya, good afternoon, good evening, and good night!
The first time I ever heard of Rye was from my father. Rye is quite famous in Germany. If you are coming to England it is one of the towns you’re recommended to visit. He had visited Rye several times and asked me:
“Did you ever go to Rye? You’ve got to go to Rye. It’s beautiful, you know, it’s very oldie-worldie!”
And I suppose, now that I live here, I understand what he means. It is very oldie-worldie! Charming, intriguing and a unique place. Right now, we are sitting looking down on ancient medieval ruins, and something is compelling about that because it tells a story about people in history. History is probably one of my favourite subjects; I love finding out about people that lived here before, I’m in a building that is 400 years old, and the use has changed several times. There is a sloping corridor in the shop leading to the room at the back; previously, it was part of an Inn called The Woodsman. Including The Standard Inn, there were three Inns next to each other. So that small slope that goes down from the front, as I looked at it with my builder’s eye, when you think about it, there’s only one possible explanation for it, the slope runs into the shop and ends at a trap door, so they used to roll barrels down the slope into the basement. I can imagine the men rolling those big wooden barrels. Stuff like that really pushes my buttons.
After two for the road Mark and I say our goodbyes to Jeff from the Ypres Castle Inn and to each other, then very casually head off home. Cheers Mark!
