Ben Jones has joined as head gardener at The Swiss Garden at The Shuttleworth Collection, near Biggleswade in Bedfordshire .

He has taken up this new post, created as part of the next phase of the ongoing restoration and development of the garden, which will focus on bringing out more of the Regency features of the garden with more emphasis on using period plants and planting style.

Formerly manager of a Mediterranean Garden at a Sicilian cookery school, Ben will head up the existing team, including a group of local volunteers, who work on the garden.

He commented: “Horticulture has always been my passion, from my first Saturday morning gardening job to managing a Mediterranean Garden, and I am really excited about joining The Swiss Garden at such a key time in its transformation. Beginning to return the historically correct planting is obviously the number one priority for me but I am also looking forward to meeting visitors to the garden and telling them about the work we are doing.”

Before joining the Anna Tasca Lanza Cooking School in Sicily, where he looked after citrus and an endangered fruit orchard along with the vegetable, ornamental and herb gardens, Ben studied horticulture at RHS Wisley.

Previously overgrown and hidden behind the hangers of the Shuttleworth vintage aircraft Collection, the Swiss Garden, the most complete surviving example of a Regency garden in Britain, re-opened in summer 2014 following a £3.6m restoration project, which focused primarily on the specialist conservation of the garden’s thirteen quirky listed buildings and structures.  The picturesque garden was created by Lord Robert Henley Ongley in the early 19th century and added to by Victorian industrialist Joseph Shuttleworth after he bought the estate in 1872.