As a nine-year-old he sold slices of home-grown melon at the side of the road in Grouville, while as a teenager he spent most of his time working outdoors on the family farm.
It was this passion for plants that led him to leave a career in journalism to become a landscape architect and horticulturist.
And now the self-confessed ‘plant nut’ has set his sights on creating Jersey’s first botanical gardens, which he hopes will grow a variety of exotic fruits as well as producing tea commercially.
Mr Labey the founder of the Jersey Botanic Garden Trust, which was set up in 1998 to create a network of botanic gardens in Jersey, also hopes that the garden would help to conserve endangered plants.
Earlier this week it was announced that the charity has submitted plans to lease the Sir Winston Churchill Memorial Park in St Brelade to create a botanical garden – an idea that Mr Labey, who lived for a time in the UK, promised himself he would pursue if he ever returned to the Island.
The 55-year-old, who lives on a farm in Grouville with his wife and children, his mother, his brother and two dogs, has always been interested in horticulture.
As a child he was given his grandfather’s home-grown melons and would sit on his garden wall selling slices of the fruit to passers-by.
He then moved to the UK to study horticulture at Pershore College in Worcestershire, and then lived in Pembrokeshire, Wales, for five years before studying at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in 1984.
‘I am just a plant nut. I just love plants. I think they are fantastic things, and such civilised creatures,’ he said.
Mr Labey graduated from Kew in 1987, despite being hit by a stolen car which was speeding at 110 mph while he was riding his moped on Twickenham Bridge just a year earlier.
He suffered extensive injuries and had to have both his knees replaced, as well as a number of other operations.
He said: ‘I was in hospital for weeks and weeks. I had loads of operations.
‘They had to patch me back together and bolt me together and literally stitch my foot back on. It was all a bit of a blur.’
Mr Labey spent four years recovering from the accident before getting a job with Haymarket Media Group in London, working on Horticulture Week magazine as a features writer, which he said was ‘fascinating’.
Following his short stint as a journalist, he moved north to study for a Master’s degree in landscape architecture at the University of Edinburgh.
After he had worked for two years as a landscape architect, he returned to Jersey in 1997.
He said: ‘I had mixed feelings about coming back. I promised myself that if I did come back, I would set up a botanic garden. It’s not so much that Jersey needs one, it’s that the world of conservation needs Jersey. It could really change a lot of things and I am very excited by the prospects.’
The horticulturist said that his favourite landscape project so far was working on the gardens at Jersey Hospice Care, because it was a project where he could ‘really make a difference’.
‘It was my baby. It is the reason you go to college to study landscape architecture,’ he said.
‘It was a complex project, because the whole site had to be accessible by wheelchair, and a particular type of people use it – people who are in need of some peace and quiet.
‘It is all designed around eye-level height of patients sitting in bed so that they can look out their window, see the view, see the garden and make the most of what is an absolutely stunning area.’
Mr Labey hopes that the Jersey Botanic Garden Trust will be able to create a network of botanical gardens across the Island and will in the future be able to work with Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust in maintaining habitats.
‘We would like to match plants to the animals and look at the whole eco-system which these creatures are a part of,’ he explained.
‘I think that could be very powerful because we could tell the whole story – you need to save the habitat to save the animal.’
He added that the charity’s main focus was to protect a number of species of endangered plants, some of which can be found only in Hawaii.
‘In Jersey we’ve got the same climate as the top part of Hawaii, and they have some amazing plants that live on the mountains, but they are endangered because they only come from Hawaii.
‘We also have the same climate as Florida, so if you have seen it growing in Florida, we can grow it here.’
Mr Labey would like to see cacti, oranges, limes, lemons and passion fruit grown in Jersey, as well as palm trees.
‘We have discovered that 64 different species of palm tree can be grown here,’ he said.
‘We will be focusing on the spectacular and the educational at the garden – that’s really what we hope to achieve with the Sir Winston Churchill Memorial Park.
‘We need to raise awareness and make people think about what Jersey is capable of.’
Speaking about his childhood dreams, he said he had wanted to be a cartoonist or a Spitfire pilot, but after working on the family farm during his teenage years he became hooked on gardening and the outdoors.
He added: ‘It was wonderful to be able to work outside and not to have to think. It was very peaceful.
‘It’s not the sort of profession where you are ever going to be rich, but it is a remarkable way to make a living.
‘I have a lot of friends who work in horticulture and we are all there because we love it.
‘I wouldn’t swap it for anything.’
Mr Labey, whose favourite botanic garden is in Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, has set his sights high for the future of Jersey’s botanical gardens and would like to see the Island growing tea commercially, as well as having the first botanical garden Michelin star restaurant.
‘I would love to grow tea at the Sir Winston Churchill Memorial Park,’ he said.
‘I really am keen that any tea that we sell through our shop will be locally grown.
‘If it is really good, it could be a great way to make money, selling Jersey botanic tea.’
A public meeting, chaired by Constable Steve Pallett, will be held on 25 June at St Brelade’s Parish Hall at 7.30 pm to discuss the idea of a botanical garden at Sir Winston Churchill Memorial Park. All are welcome.
