Webb, Marylyn – TV presenter went into the garden business

Marylyn Webb (1948-2014)

Marylyn Webb was  trailblazing television presenter and a familiar face to YTV viewers for more than 20 years.

She joined Yorkshire Television in 1972 from the Lancashire Evening Post in Preston. Her first job was with a news unit based in Lincoln – YTV having taken over the Belmont transmitter from Anglia TV.

In Lincoln she worked with Alan Hardwick, former Police and Crime Commissioner for Lincolnshire.

In 1975 she moved to the Leeds television centre as reporter, news reader and presenter,

She co-presented daily news programme Calendar in the late 1970s and 1980s, following the news.

She also hosted regional programmes including the long-running series It’s a Vet’s Life with Leeds veterinarian John Baxter and gardening shows with her future partner, Alan Mason.

Marylyn was named Radio and Television Industries (Yorkshire) Club Personality of the Year 1983/4, covering a period in which she presented Calendar and six other series.

She met her garden-designer husband Alan Mason on Calendar Goes Gardening

From 1989 to 1999, Marylyn ran Freeair, a production company which covered environmental topics, and she and her husband had Grassroots which produced gardening programmes for YTV, Channel 4 and Anglia TV.

In 1988 Marylyn and bought a 14th century manor house at Port de Roche near Langon in Brittany, France. The House came with eight and a half acres of garden, streams and woodland and it was here that they created a showpiece “English” garden, using the Best of British in horticulture to take the great British art of gardening into Europe.

The couple moved to a home in the grounds of Harlaxton Manor in 1992, where Alan started the restoration and development of 110 acres of garden and grounds.

From there they moved to Frieston, near Caythorpe, where Marylyn died until which she had concentrated on Alan Mason Garden Design which Alan had established in 1987.