Horticulture Careers Discovery Week

We hope you were able to join us for Horticulture Careers Discovery Week (22 – 26 January 2024), where we hosted a series of online talks to give people of all ages and backgrounds an insight into the variety of horticultural career paths available.

Beth Anderson | Plant Health and Seeds Inspector

As a Plant Health and Seeds Inspector for the Animal and Plant Health Agency, Beth helps protect the UK from dangerous pests and diseases. She leads on STEM engagement for the agency, and enjoys inspiring young people to pursue careers related to plant health. Her career pathway was unconventional and she joined APHA as an apprentice in 2020, studying alongside her work. At home in Manchester, she spends her spare time working with community garden projects and re-naturalising her terraced garden.

Katie Andrews | Therapeutic Horticulture Practitioner

Katie is a social and therapeutic horticulture practitioner at Root and Branch, a charity that helps adults who experience severe mental health difficulties on their recovery towards mental and emotional well-being through gardening, crafts, woodwork and other nature related activities. Katie has an RHS Level 2 and Level 3 Certificate in Practical Horticulture and recently obtained her Diploma in Social and Therapeutic Horticulture with Thrive, The Society for Horticultural Therapy.

James Armitage | Editor The Plant Review & The Orchid Review

James only discovered a love of plants in his late teens but learned quickly thereafter. After gaining an HND in Plantsmanship at Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, he completed a master’s degree in plant taxonomy at University of Reading. He started as a botanist at RHS Garden Wisley in 2002 and published widely in botanical journals and popular horticultural magazines. He made the move to publishing in 2018 as editor of the RHS periodicals The Plant Review and The Orchid Review.

Natalie Ashbee | RHS Gardens Content Editor

Natalie has been quietly writing since she was a little girl, but initially studied Languages at University and worked in the travel industry. In her twenties, she moved home to Cornwall and qualified as a Primary school teacher. In her thirties, she retrained and worked as a gardener and planting designer, and in her forties moved to Bristol and became a Horticultural TV specialist for programmes such as BBC Gardeners’ World. Her gift to herself, now in her fifties, was to focus on writing and she now works, and gardens, from home in West Cornwall.

Ed Bowring | Social and Therapeutic Horticulture Practitioner

Originally an occupational therapist, Ed extended his training obtaining a Professional Development Diploma in Social and Therapeutic Horticulture. He further studied for an RHS Level 2 Certificate leading him to a new career in horticultural therapy, working with military veterans at the Royal Hospital Chelsea. For the past eight years, Ed has managed and run a community kitchen garden for Transition Chichester, helping others access the many physical and mental health benefits of growing edibles and plants.

Lucy Carson-Taylor FLS | Animal and Plant Health Agency

Lucy is passionate about all things plant health and science communication. She leads plant health public and stakeholder engagement for the Animal and Plant Health Agency, working across the UK and internationally. Lucy has a natural sciences background with an MSc in Plant Pathology, she takes a multidisciplinary approach to her practice, partnering with social researchers and artists. Lucy’s team have won multiple RHS Chelsea Flower Show medals and will be exhibiting again this year.

Lucy Chamberlain | Garden Writer

With a degree in Environmental Biology, Lucy initially worked as an RHS Horticultural Advisor, leaving to pursue a career as a garden writer at Amateur Gardening magazine and then as Editor of Grow Your Own magazine. As a freelancer, Lucy does private gardening alongside writing for magazines. She regularly podcasts on Talking Heads, is the gardening expert for BBC Radio Essex, won Practical Journalist of the Year in 2020, and is author of The RHS Step-by-Step Veg Patch, selling over 85,000 copies.

Josh Corbett | Arborist

Josh is the Arboriculture Team Leader at RHS Garden Bridgewater. The 154-acre green space at RHS Garden Bridgewater is the fifth RHS garden and one of the largest gardening projects undertaken in Europe in recent years. He has a love of the natural world and is fascinated by trees. Josh left school and started studying horticulture but soon realised that his interest lay specifically in trees. Now having spent almost 18 years working with them his interest in the art and science of their management has never been stronger.

Alice Cornwell | Community Development

As the Community Development officer for South East London, Alice is developing the RHS flagship wellbeing hospital garden in University Hospital Lewisham. She works with a number of groups to support community wellbeing through gardening and being in nature. Whilst working full time she is studying for a BSc (Hons) in Environmental Science. Prior to working in the RHS, Alice worked in a number of gardening roles, including a peony nursery, estate gardener and a plant inspector for DEFRA.

Andrew Gaunt | Commercial Agronomist

Andrew trained at a local Agricultural College, went on to do a degree in Agriculture at Aberystwyth and on completion became a commercial Agronomist in Arable Production. It was here that Andrew saw the work of Plant Health Inspectors, in cereal and potato seed certification and became more interested in a role protecting the country’s food supply and environment from the ever-rising number of damaging Quarantine pests and diseases that arrive from around the world.

Pippa Greenwood | Plant Pathologist

Gardening expert and plant pathologist Pippa Greenwood made regular appearances on BBC 2’s Gardeners’ World, presenting many features on garden pests and diseases, science and gardening, and creating and running her organic kitchen garden from her Hampshire garden. She is a regular panellist on BBC Radio 4’s Gardeners’ Question Time alongside a number of other television and radio programmes, has written many books and hosts gardening tours and gives gardening-related demonstrations all over the UK and abroad. Photo credit: PippaGreenwood.com

Lia Hervey | Executive Editor Digital

Lia Hervey has worked in journalism for 20 years – working across print, television and digital. She was the lead producer for Sky News and Sky Sports News for the Olympic Games and Tour de France and freelance lead producer on the BBC 1pm, 6pm and 10pm News. She led the digital content on the website for the International Olympic Committee before becoming a gardener and is now the Editor of the RHS website.

Tom Howard | RHS Head Of Editorial

Tom loved writing before he loved gardening, and after finishing journalism school in 2008 freelanced for Channel 4 before doing five-year stints on each of FHM and NME. He was technically the last ever NME editor and was Acting Editor when they closed the magazine in 2018 and made him redundant. By now he loved gardening, so used his redundancy cash to retrain in horticulture. Somehow he managed to combine journalism and gardening by landing his RHS job in 2020.

Pauline Jordan | Horticultural Marketing Inspector

Pauline has a dual role- Plant Health & Seeds Inspector and Horticultural Marketing Inspector; she is based in southern England. Some of her formative years were spent in Guyana, South America, working in the national Plant Pathology Laboratory. On return to the UK, she continued in pathology and founded Hortic Therapy, a social enterprise delivering gardening sessions to care home residents living with dementia. Pauline views her work as an honour and pleasure to protect our borders, trade and environment.

Claire Lakey | RHS Advisory team

As a Project Manager in the RHS Advisory team, Claire provides large data sets of information for digital platforms such as the RHS Grow app, alongside managing a range of projects to update advice web pages. Claire’s multifaceted career started after graduating from Greenwich University in garden design and setting up a private practice. 25 years later, she returned to the University as Programme Leader of Garden Design. Claire’s curiosity, love of plants and the great outdoors has been of profound and personal therapeutic value, sprouting a new career branch into Transactional Analysis psychotherapy and counselling.

Melissa Mabbitt | Executive Editor of The Garden magazine

Melissa trained as a news journalist and spent a few years working in public sector communications, before changing career to horticulture. She took RHS and City & Guilds gardening qualifications at a local college and then got an apprenticeship at Bodnant Garden. After a chance meeting with someone in the know, she realised she could combine both her skillsets and applied for a job as a writer on Garden News magazine. She worked through the ranks of various magazines and is now Executive Editor of The Garden.

Lydia Matthews | Landscape creation for film and TV industry

Graduating with a First Class BA (Hons) in Fine Art & Textile design from Bath Spa University in 2014, Lydia’s career took off when she joined Greens Team nine years ago as a Trainee and quickly progressed by showing a creative eye in set dressing. Her greatest achievement to date was working on the hit mini-series, Disclaimer, where she led work on the house set of one of programme’s characters, Stephen. Lydia has an RHS Level 1 and Level 2 Qualification in horticulture and is currently employed as a Chargehand at Green Teams.

Rebekah Mealey | Horticultural Advisor

Becky is a Horticultural Advisor and runs the live social media clinics across the main RHS channels, along with responding to RHS members questions online, phone and face to face. Her job is to help solve gardening enquiries and at the same time this ever-changing job helps to feed her interest and knowledge of gardening. She was fortunate to be able to study and work in the world of horticulture from the age of 15 and it never seizes to amaze her what a wonderful and diverse subject it is.

Sarah Millington MHort (RHS) | Make a living growing plants

After studying law at university, Sarah decided to go into horticulture and joined the family-run nursery, Hillview Hardy Plants, in 2002. The Nursery, founded by her mother, Ingrid Millington, in 1987 has become well-known for its collections of plants including Primula Auriculas. Sarah graduated with the prestigious, RHS Master of Horticulture (MHort) Award in 2021.

Gemma Morson | Blogger and social media influencer

A recipe developer by trade, allotment owner Gem, launched The Mother Cooker in 2017, teaching people how to become more self-sustainable by sowing and growing their own seasonal food, and sharing her award-winning recipes.
In 2019, Gem began studying for an RHS Level 2 Qualification. The knowledge gained helped tie together her passion for growing and her business. Gem has over 15k followers on @the_mothercooker, and is also a professional gardener working for a garden design company on their aftercare team.

Lizzie Munson | Founder, The Rose Press Garden

Listed as one of the Telegraph Natwest Top 100 Female Entrepreneur to Watch, Lizzie formed her gardening subscription service in 2020 after spotting a gap in the market. With few products resonating with younger people, Lizzie created The Rose Press Garden a monthly subscription box containing seasonal seeds, bulbs, tubers and plants with a very modern feel. She currently has over 26k subscribers and recently launched a new Gardening App providing planting guides, how to videos and advice.

John Parker | Arboriculture

John Parker has been CEO of the Arboricultural Association since July 2021, is UK & Ireland President of the International Society of Arboriculture, a member of the European Forum on Urban Forestry (EFUF) International Steering Group and a UK representative on the European Arboricultural Council. He is a Chartered Environmentalist, Chartered Forester and an Associate Member of the Royal Society of Biology. In 2022 he was named one of the 25 Most Influential People in Horticulture by Pro Landscaper Magazine.

Justin Richards | Landscape creation for film and TV industry

Greens Team Ltd are the world’s leading greens company based at Pinewood Studies, providing natural set dressing for many of the biggest film and TV shows in the world, building tropical jungles, alien swamps, dark magical forests, lush green landscapes, warfare trenches and English country gardens. Justin has been Operations Director for over 13 years covering all aspects of the business and working on projects from Barbie to Star Wars to Jurassic World & Cinderella. Its horticulture but not as you know it!

Dr Andrew Salisbury | Plant Health

An Entomologist at heart, Andrew leads the RHS Plant Health team, consisting of specialist experts in biosecurity, ecology, entomology, nematology, plant pathology and wildlife. He collaborates across the organisation and with external stakeholders, to promote and facilitate the advisory, research and biosecurity work of the RHS.

Jack Shilley MHort (RHS) | Horticultural Retail and Buying

On the HortWeek 35 under 35 list for 2023, Jack has always worked in horticulture, operating in and managing garden centres, and is currently Deputy Manager at Longacres Garden Centre in Bagshot, the largest independent garden centre in the UK. He shares his perspective on horticultural retail, buying, and the opportunities in this sector.
Jack is a founder member of YoungHort, an initiative dedicated to promoting young people in horticulture and obtained the RHS Master of Horticulture (MHort) award in 2019.

Emma Tipping | Garden Designer

While studying Geography at University, Emma became fascinated by the connections between places and people. Following experience as a gardener for a luxury London hotel, and completing her Level 3 RHS Qualification, her goal was to design and create gardens that bring a sense of joy and peace to the people that use them, sensitive to the context of their surroundings. Emma won a Silver Medal Award at the RHS Tatton Park Young Designer of the Year Competition in 2022, followed by Gold at this year’s RHS Chelsea Flower Show.

Horticulture Discovery week

Horticulture Discovery week

Discovery week programme

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The Royal Horticultural Society is the UK’s leading gardening charity. We aim to enrich everyone’s life through plants, and make the UK a greener and more beautiful place.