Revd Charles Overton

Running the French National Water Lily Gardens is probably not on the mind of most ordinands as they put themselves forward for a life of ministry.

But that is what the Revd Charles Overton did for three years.

The Vicar of Chalfont St Peter told Jo Duckles his story over a coffee, after a trip to Oxford's Botanic Gardens, where this summer he had planted some spectacular water lilies.

Water lilies in the vicarage garden.

It was raining when I met the aquatic plant expert who told me his story, but the lilies and the pond at the gardens still looked spectacular.

Charles was born in Scotland to RAF parents, and his family then moved to what is now Terminal Five at Heathrow Airport, and then to Slough, where Charles joined the choir of St Francis's Church when it was built in 1961 and studied at Slough Grammar School.

When he went to Oxford's Corpus Christi College to read Chemistry, his older brother, who was already studying there, invited him to St Aldate's Church, where Keith De Berry was the rector. "Keith preached at a service and I stayed behind afterwards and gave my life to the Lord," says Charles.

"I had read my Bible every day since my confirmation aged 14.

I struggled with the King James Version, but I got a good grounding in scripture.

As Keith de Berry preached, it seemed like all the bits of the Bible I knew were fitted together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and suddenly it all made sense. "With an increasing sense of being called to ordination, Charles went for his first selection conference in September 1973.

"I was not told to do something else for a few years and come back, I was simply rejected as 'not recommended'.

I asked the Director of Ordinands to find out why," says Charles.

The then Bishop of Oxford, the

The Revd Charles Overton Rt Revd Kenneth Woollcombe told Charles to return 12 months later.

He did and was recommended for training.

Meanwhile he had secured a position as Administration Trainee with HM Customs and Excise, but never took up the post. Charles completed a Cert Ed as a chemistry teacher.

He taught for two years in the Pilgrim School in Bedford before returning for a further three years in Cambridge studying theology.

Ordained in Rochester Cathedral, Charles became a curate in Tonbridge and in his first year married Lesley.

Following the curacy he became a school chaplain at St Lawrence College, Ramsgate and then, in 1988, a country vicar looking after three churches in Essex.

He then went to Hughenden, where he had the space for seven outdoor ponds and two inside a polytunnel.

"I have been interested in waterlilies since I was a child and built my first garden pond when I was 13," he says. In early 2000 he was asked to go and look after the French National Collection of Waterlilies and the 19th century aquatic nursery that first gave coloured hardy waterlilies to the world.

The five-and-a-half acre site has hardy and tropical waterlilies, lotuses and the giant Victoria lily.

It is open to the public from April to September.

Charles was supposed to go from the beginning of March to the end of October.

Meanwhile, Lesley, who worked at Wycombe Hospital, stayed in the UK, looking after their four children and visiting once a month. Charles was responsible for everything at the centre, with the help of Sylvie, a French woman who ran the shop, and one labourer who spoke neither French nor English.

An 'O' level in French taken in 1967 did little to equip him as a French speaker but inevitably Charles picked up some of the language while he was out there.

By the time he moved back to the UK, three years later, the gardens had doubled their turnover.

His expertise is in demand because, as well as being asked to replant the lily pond at the Botanic Garden of Oxford University this year, he is a regular speaker at garden clubs.

He also gets calls from lifestyle magazines and has been on the television talking about everything from the culinary uses of waterlilies to the aphrodisiac qualities of Nile lotuses. As well as his interest in waterlilies, he has taken a keen interest in sports, running youth camps at Lee Abbey and was asked to be chaplain to all the English- speaking athletes at the Winter Olympic Games in 1992 at Albertville.

"At the time of my ordination I consciously said 'Lord, I know I will never be able to afford to ski as a clergyman, I give that one back to you, thank you. ' Twelve years later, and having manned English Churches in the Alps with Intercon, I became a chaplain to the Olympic Games, it was an extraordinary experience. " And back in Chalfont St Peter, Charles might not have the right space for a pond, but he did get his former colleague Sylvie to send 70 half wine-barrels, in which he grows them in his garden. Charles's next engagement to speak, on the the History and Cultivation of the Waterlily, is on 25 February 2016 at Hagbourne Garden Club, East Hagbourne Village Hall (OX11 9LR).

Doors open at 7pm.