How pop star Kim Wilde became an award-winning gardener

If you peek into the garden of Kim Wilde’s Hertfordshire home, there’s a good chance you’ll find the English pop star turning her compost heap or ripping out weeds – while looking like she’s just stepped off the set of a music video.

“I’ll come home covered in make-up, feeling tired and frazzled, and just go outside in whatever I’m wearing,” says Wilde, who brings her Greatest Hits Tour to Australia in mid-October. “A few hours later, when I’m covered in mud, I’ll come back in. It doesn’t matter if my outfit gets ruined. For me, it’s a way of getting rid of some stress.”

Since her debut single, Kids in America, was released in 1981, Wilde has sold more than 30 million records globally and is the most-charted British female solo act of the 1980s. (As a trained horticulturist, she is also the only person to obtain both a US No.1 single and a gold medal at the prestigious Chelsea Flower Show.)

When we connect over Zoom, Wilde is sitting in her bedroom, a suitably glamorous space with a leopard-print bedspread and a projector that throws colourful night sky animations across the ceiling. After I ask her to specify her worst habit – one of the Take 7 questions, below – she disappears to consult her daughter, Rose. I hear a peal of laughter in the distance before she returns to her computer.

“My hearing has been impaired by years of rock ’n rolling, so Rose thinks my worst habit is that I forget to put my hearing aids in,” she says. “We end up having these hilarious conversations where she says something, and I’ll misinterpret it as something completely different.”

In January, Wilde will release her 15th studio album, Closer. The lead single, Trail of Destruction, is a critique of modern-day ills, from environmental devastation to fake news and social media toxicity.

“We don’t seem to be making much progress, and things seem to be getting worse a lot of the time,” she says. “There are good things going on, too, and I’m not a pessimist but every now and again, I want to pull my hair out.”

Closer is a companion piece to Wilde’s hit 1988 album, Close. It was inspired by English pop band ABC releasing The Lexicon of Love II in 2016 as a follow-up to their 1982 debut.

Wilde wanted to be a gardener since the age of nine, when her family moved from London to the English countryside.Credit: WireImage

“Close was a very diverse album, so we used it as a blueprint,” Wilde says. “It had dance tracks like Hey Mister Heartache, stomping bangers like Never Trust a Stranger, some beautiful ballads and some up-tempo stuff. I’m getting the final mixes of Closer now, and it’s unbelievable.”

Wilde was born in 1960 to Marty Wilde, one of England’s earliest rock ‘n’ roll stars, and Joyce Baker, a member of musical ensemble the Vernon Girls. Her brother, Ricky, and sister, Roxanne, are also musicians, as are her niece, Scarlett, son Harry and daughter Rose. (When Wilde’s career took off, she’d record Top of the Pops during the day before returning to the family home, where she’d help change Roxanne’s nappies.)

In 2020, Marty released the single, Running Together, giving him the distinction of charting across eight consecutive decades as a singer or songwriter.

“We recorded a family concert to celebrate,” Wilde says. “All the generations got up on stage and sang songs with him. We were very, very proud.”

Ricky and Marty co-wrote and produced most of her early hits including Kids in America, Chequered Love, Water on Glass, View From a Bridge, Love Blonde and The Second Time. By the mid-1980s, Wilde began writing with Ricky, who also produced her two hit covers: the Supremes’ You Keep Me Hangin’ On (which topped the charts in four countries, including the United States and Australia) and the Bee Gees’ If I Can’t Have You (No.3 in Australia).

“I don’t know what’s going on with Ricky but the melodies coming out of that man are incredible,” she says of his work on Closer. “The album is a nod to our ’80s roots but also the late 1970s with the Police and the Clash, and even going back to the ’60s with Motown.”

Wilde and her father, Marty, a rock ‘n’ roll star who co-wrote many of her early hits with her brother, Ricky.Credit: DAILY MIRROR

Does she attribute her own musical proficiency to nature or nurture?

“I think it’s a genetic thing but don’t get me wrong, there’s a huge amount of nurture as well. I grew up with one of the best record collections because my dad was always buying this really cool new music. We didn’t just listen to his old Frank Sinatra and Elvis records; he also bought stuff like Mike Oldfield, Kraftwerk, Joni Mitchell and Earth, Wind & Fire. He just devoured it all in the same way my brother does.”

When Wilde filmed the clip for Kids in America, which helped usher in the MTV era, her director offered some wine to help her relax. She wasn’t nervous but she drank the wine anyway. “I didn’t need to have my arm twisted!” she laughs. “I don’t know why but I always felt comfortable with a camera. As soon as it rolled, I made a connection with it. And I’m a teetotaller now.”

While some of her contemporaries resent being approached by fans in public, Wilde has always appreciated these conversations.

“It’s like a window that lets you look out onto the world,” she says. “That’s why I love performing live and seeing the faces of people singing our songs and getting involved. It’s a beautiful thing and I know how lucky I am to be doing a job that only a very small percentage of the world’s population get to do.”

When Wilde was nine, her family moved from a semi-detached London house with no garden to a thatched cottage in Hertfordshire.

“In my 20s, I had this feeling of anxiety from when I’d wake up.”

Kim Wilde

“It was May, so everything was in flower, we were surrounded by nature and animals, and the people next door were growing vegetables,” she recalls. “It was astonishing to me and I made a deal with myself that when I was a grown-up, I wanted to grow vegetables and flowers, too.”

TAKE 7: THE ANSWERS ACCORDING TO KIM WILDE

1. Worst habit? Forgetting to put my hearing aids in.
2. Greatest fear? I fear what’s happening to our planet; that we’re at a tipping point where things get completely out of control.
3. The line that stayed with you? That’s easy – it’s from Dave Grohl [who covered Kids in America with the Foo Fighters]. He said the reason he loves music is that when he performs a song to 85,000 people, they sing it back to him for 85,000 different reasons. It’s a magical moment when that happens.
4. Biggest regret? I wish I hadn’t worked so hard when my children were young. You can’t get those years back. If anyone reading this has young children, I’d say to put your kids first because they need you more than any job ever will.
5. Favourite book? One Garden Against the World: In Search of Hope in a Changing Climate by Kate Bradbury. She’s asking us to look after everything by not using pesticides, and by thinking about wildlife habitats and things like hedgehogs, bees and butterflies. She writes in a really beautiful way.
6. The artwork/song you wish was yours? Left to My Own Devices by the Pet Shop Boys because it makes me feel good to be alive. They had a big impact on [my brother and musical collaborator] Rick’s production; when you hear Never Trust a Stranger, you can hear the Pet Shop Boys’ influence.
7. If you could time travel, where would you go? I’d be tempted to go back 500 years to see what the world looked like before we built, paved and concreted all over it. And I’d love a glimpse into how the Vikings lived because they were very creative and artistic.

In the late ’90s, during her first pregnancy, Wilde began studying horticulture so she could create a special garden for her children. It was a welcome change from the music industry.

“When I was younger, it was fun making videos and wearing lots of lipstick and fabulous clothes and travelling the world. But it’s no surprise I got out when I did because it wasn’t challenging enough. It had become repetitive and rather boring.”

In 2000, Wilde became a designer on ITV’s Better Gardens before filming two seasons of BBC’s Garden Invaders, and she has written two books, Gardening with Children and First-Time Gardener. Her other achievements include an award-winning Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland-themed garden she created with fellow horticulturist David Fountain, her involvement in setting a world record for the largest tree transplantation, and a stint as a weekly gardening columnist for The Guardian.

In the early 2000s, when the music industry began placing more emphasis on live performances to promote records, Wilde found herself drawn back in.

“That’s what made it fun again,” she says, adding that gardening will always be one of her biggest passions. “I wasn’t really a performer when I started my career. It’s only been the past 20 years where I feel comfortable getting up on stage. It’s the best feeling.”

At 64, Wilde is much more content than she was at the start of her career. “In my 20s, I had this feeling of anxiety from when I’d wake up. It felt like something wasn’t quite right, and I’d worry about the future a lot, but all that is gone now,” she says.

“I know that time isn’t limitless, and I’ve made a decision to celebrate the life that is left for me in the most outrageously fabulous way that I can.”

Kim Wilde tours Australia from October 17-26. Tickets at metropolistouring.com.