The Orchard Studio

A fresh new blog

Blogging feels very retro these days. I started this blog in 2009 and then abandoned it in 2012 and lately I've been thinking about getting back on it again to talk about my life and interests a bit more than just banging on about work. I've just finished my degree and let go of a lot of stressful stuff in my life and I'm looking forward to new beginnings and a fresh new year. I will use this as a kind of diary to get me started and a place to discuss issues that matter to me and undoubtedly then abandon it again for another few years!

Jobs for the Girls (and the boys) - The Marvellous WFGA

Way back in 2001 I applied to the Women’s Farm and Garden Association to train via their scheme, which places women (and now men) into gardens to learn about horticulture and I have not looked back! When I’m not running my own business I also work with the Association managing gardens and trainees in the South West.

 

 The WFGA began with a small group of professional women determined to provide training and opportunities in 1899. Over the next 100 years this charitable organisation set about providing training and career opportunities for women working in horticulture and agriculture, having set up the Women’s Land Army in 1914, courses and examinations in farming subjects, Gardening Apprenticeship Schemes and Commercial holdings to teach the growing of fruit and vegetables.

The Women Returners to Amenity Gardening Scheme,  follows in this tradition. Set up in 1993, WRAGS, as it is known, has been designed to cover a training opportunity for which none of the existing educational programmes appear to cater for.

The aim of the Scheme is to hold a national register of placement gardens, mostly private but some public, where practical instruction in amenity horticulture is offered to students who are seeking a career in gardening.  We are lucky enough to name the Bristol Botanic Gardens amongst our training gardens in this area.

This teaching is supervised by an experienced Garden Owner or a Head Gardener and is arranged to allow for a flexible approach to training on a part-time basis, within a fifteen mile radius of the trainee’s home location. This set-up makes it ideal for people with children of school age. My own daughter was only 5 when I did my training but I could still be there to drop her at school and pick her up.

 

This is an essential element of the Scheme, that allows for the fact that many trainees are changing careers, have experienced redundancy or unemployment and must combine their training with other employment during this period.

 

The Scheme now has a register of 140 placement gardens in England, Wales and Scotland, these range from large estate gardens, open to the public to smaller private gardens that may open 3 or 4 times a year.  We have royal gardens, gardens in the squares of London, Community gardens, National Trust gardens, school gardens, nursery gardens, walled gardens, heritage gardens, gardens set within the grounds of castles and palaces - Hampton Court Palace, Grimsthorpe Castle in Lincolnshire, Hever Castle to name but a few.

All chosen for their level of expertise, within a gardening team or an experienced owner and variety offered within the garden, the facilities to propagate, collection of tools and machinery, composting, mostly organic, vegetable growing, coppicing, fruit trees, bog planting, cutting gardens, lime walks, lawns and  nutterys.

The training takes place over 15 hours within a week, for a period of one year and a training allowance is paid to the trainee to cover basic costs.

Once the trainee has been interviewed and accepted into a garden, a probationary period of 30 hours is worked and once confirmed by the Wrags Co-Ordinator, the Association then requests payment of the registration fees, £115 for the Garden Owner and £350 for the trainee.

They have a national register of trainees, some coming back into horticulture after raising a family, others changing career, or choosing horticulture as a new career path. Most are amateur gardeners and many have their own gardens or allotments and often combine local college courses, RHS examinations with the Scheme.

They are enthusiastic, good time keepers, reliable and do not require constant supervision.  Many of them finish their training and set up self employed gardening businesses, and some decide to work within a gardening team with a long term goal in climbing the career ladder in horticulture, others will add design and specialist planting to their repertoire.

To prepare them for working out in the gardening world, the Women’s Farm and Garden Association has set up a programme of workshops.  Covering specialist skills, planting, and business aspects, these are organised to give trainees an opportunity to network with experts, in small groups, all are ‘hands on’ learning experiences and are vital to the training year.

It is the only Scheme to utilise the expertise of Owners who have toiled over many years and gained valuable knowledge to pass on, which is often lost when they retire from gardening.  The WFGA also runs fantastic workshops, work days and training days which  include  ‘rural skills’ and to date has tackled dry stone walling, bee keeping, chickens, hedge laying, coppicing and bread making amongst many other subjects.

 

I am a huge fan of the WFGA, having trained with them and having been on many of their courses and garden holidays. If you are interested in being a trainee or you have a garden that would benefit from having a trainee, you can contact me direct or for information on membership of the Association and to register as a WRAGS trainee, please contact the Women’s Farm and Garden Association,

175 Gloucester Street, Cirencester, Gloucestershire GL7 2DP

 telephone 01285 658339, email [email protected] or visit the website www.wfga.org.uk

 

 

A long hard slog

 

I reckon that over 70 hours have been spent strimming, weeding, planting, digging, slug murdering, more weeding and sowing so far. We still have not eaten a single thing from the plot but here's what's growing for now:

Russian kale, sweetpeas, shallots, turnips, carrots x 2 types, red spring onion, gooseberries, redcurrants, blackcurrants, runner beans, peas, asparagus peas, sunflowers, sorrel, sweetcorn, french beans, radishes, dill, Ammi Major, Malope Vulcan, beetroot and yellow trefoil.

And that's just for starters, although it's hard to tell from the photo and looks like nothing much is in there.

So a lot of hard work. Might have been easier to carry on with the veg box but it's keeping Mr out of the house and busy and it's got a lovely view, so what more could you want?

Never underestimate the backbreaking tedium of having an allotment. Let's hope the first crop of peas or whatever bursts forth first will make it all worthwhile. Allotment owning has been likened to childbirth and I can see why.

Chelsea 2012 - Gardens, celebs and bacon rolls

So that will be the back of Ringo's head and Ryan (@ryansgarden) pretending to pose

 

The first time I ever went to Chelsea Flower Show was in 1985 when I was on some YTS scheme (don't ask) and got a job selling icecream at the show. Every morning before the grounds opened I would wander around the gardens and the pavilion and wonder at it all. Which is surprising really now I look back, because I wasnt much interested in gardens back then. I did however buy a very tall foxglove on the last day and took it home on the bus. I didnt have a garden, but I didnt care. This might have been the beginning of my fascination with the whole business of Chelsea. An event I find amazing and infuriating all in one go.

Forward 28 years and I found myself at the press day ogling the many celebs and getting a good gander at the gardens. The celebrity count was high, although frankly I cant think of the last time I saw Floella Benjamin in anything, and the gardens were bold and expensive, tall and flashy but in between it all there were small beautiful details, gorgeous planting, inspirational touches and finally, a garden which actually nearly moved me to tears, The Korean DMZ garden. The more I looked at this garden, the more I saw and I felt it showed up the huge erection next door.

You've all seen the gardens, but I'll bet you've not seen these three...

It was evident to me that the sponsors hold the key to the way gardens are presented these days. Tons of expensive landscaping, massive great trees, showy and flashy and really out of place considering the current financial situation most of us are living in. I particularly took against one, which for me was vulgar, ill conceived and really much the same as many gardens I've seen in the past. It reminded me of the now defunct Westonbirt Garden Festival which ran for a few years and showcased some very exciting and innovative gardens, it was a stretch to find anything close at Chelsea this year.

The Artisan gardens were as they always are, tiny areas of detail and some really great planting, I stopped and admired two in particular, the Japanese garden Satoyama Life and The Plankbridge Shepherd's Hut garden.They are what they are, and they are not meant to be actual gardens, they are little pieces of theatre and incredibly well done.

Well, that's my opinion and doubtless many will disagree. Gardens do not need to be pretty and pristine. The Korean Garden proved that for me, the beauty was in the feeling and in the detail and although I'm sure it cost a packet to produce, it did at least make people stop and look and think. Many of the rest were too easy to pass by.

 

Anyway, back to the celebs. Seeing Cliff, Brucie, Nigel, John, Ringo and John Hurt must be a full house surely?

Julian Fellowes doing his thing with shepherds hut.

 

Gardeners beware

So it's been a while yet again. I've been prompted to post on here as I'm writing about blogs for Thinkingardens,and I've felt bad about the amount of neglect my blog receives.

News just in this week is that I have been banned from gardening for at least three months. Or lifting anything or holding anything tightly in my right hand. It seems that I have worn my carpometacarpal joint somewhat by overusing and abusing it for many many years with using blunt secateurs, lifting stupidly heavy things, generally not taking better care of my hands when working and as a result am suffering with a combination of osteoarthritis and a worn down joint at the base of my thumb on my right hand.

Not ideal is it? Given that the option is an operation and a long time not gardening and indeed being in plaster, I have been warned. So I write this wearing a horribly unattractive flesh coloured hand splint and feeling quite sorry for myself. Thank goodness I can still drive, type, dress myself, lift a glass and shout. This however is a salutory lesson in taking better care of my poor body and particularly as a professional gardener where many years have been spent relying on my good health.

So all you gardeners out there.. especially the women (because apparently we are more prone).. be careful and take good care of your thumbs!

A Confession

I thought I would use this blogpost to confess to the world my chronic phone addiction and how this has recently lead me to some very dark places.

Once upon a time, not that long ago, I managed to get through life without a smart phone, or in my case an Iphone. I had the same little mobile phone for years and waited until I got home to read my emails or do anything I needed to do online.  Then a few years ago I bought myself an Iphone and I've been hopelessly in love and at the same addicted to it ever since. And I thought it was time to come out and confess... My name is Emma. And I'm an iphone addict.

There have been many highs and lows throughout my relationship with this device. It certainly spends more time with me than any of my loved ones and the thought of losing it puts me into a panic similar to losing my child in a shopping centre, only more so.  It's enabled me to become far more efficient at work, I can respond quickly to clients, I can keep up to date with emails, and I can stay in touch with Twitter or Facebook or any number of other social websites.  I am never ever alone.

I am hooked on Instagram, and over the last year have connected with many like-minded photographers and taken lots of photos of my dogs, my daughter, my garden and anything else in my life. And along the way also found masses of great camera apps which means hours of me fiddling on my phone. I love being able to keep up with all the latest news, other blogs, sites like Pininterest as well as the Guardian App and of course Angry Birds.

Some evenings I glance at my loved ones, also glued to their phones, either texting, on Twitter, Facebook or surfing the net and I miss the days before we had our phones.  We have allowed them to encroach far too much into our lives and in many ways they have become a blessing and a curse.

This week I briefly 'lost' my phone. The appalling panic which ensued has made me realise how much I have allowed this small shiny thing into my life. I experienced a temporary horror that everything in my world is actually on that phone, that if I were to lose it I would lose everything. Which of course is utter rubbish, but when you are hopelessly addicted as I am, it feels like that...

So what's to be done? I've tried cold turkey in the evenings, hiding it upstairs and instead of tweeting and texting and reading emails forced myself to read a book, but before to long I've found an excuse to creep up and find it again. I'm so lost to it that I'm even kidding myself these days!

Whatever did we do before we had these phones? How have they wedged themselves in so thoroughly into our lives? Answers on a postcard. Or a text, or via Twitter, or Facebook please.

 

 

 

Allotment Alert

 

By some sheer fluke, I appear to be the proud owner of an allotment, which is but 20 yards from my house. This all came about last week and I am extremely excited about getting stuck in. I had been offered a large portion of a client's garden to grow veg on this year, but I wasnt sure if I had the time, however this plot came out of the blue and as it's so near to home I'm going to make it mine! In the photo above, mine is the rough grassy bit beyond the tall dead plants! It's very rough...

 

This is my fantasy allotment, painting by Johnstoa.com

The main things going for it are the amazing beautiful view which stretches towards Solsbury Hill as well as the sheer size, of 25 metres by 5 metres wide, it has a plum tree and a large old metal water tank and is really easy to access so I'm chuffed. The downside is that it needs some serious grunt work to get it useable. The ground looks as if it has not been cultivated for a very long time and I'm going to need to bring in the heavies to help get it terraced for beds and ready for planting.

 

However, at the moment I'm dreaming of making it my place to hide, perhaps at some point it might also have a shed but at least for now a bench to sit and admire the view and all my gorgeous vegetables as well as flowers for cutting.  I'm rather hoping it will end up looking a bit like this once the prep work is done!

 

Welcome to 2012!

 

I'm going to spare everyone the usual 'gosh I havent blogged for months' as I actually have not bothered to blog for months and months, but I realised the other day that I was missing it and also had some interesting web enquiries lately from it as well as Google searches which kept showing me my own badly neglected blog!

So here I am.

This year I pledge to use up the Polaroid film languishing in my fridge which is extremely out of date and to also visit more gardens. Last year was taken up with dashing about and running the gardening school as well as taking on a lot of new work, and so I did not get the chance to take as many photos as usual. The polaroid here was taken at Abbotsbury Sub-Tropical Gardens in Dorset back in late August.

This year sees some interesting new projects in the pipeline, including a commission to design a garden for a very unusual listed property in Bath. Hopefully more of that later.

I am also going to be moving into more commercial work this year as well as writing and hot off the press, the much discussed (on Twitter) WTF Gardening project, founded with Sara Venn will be making an appearance very soon, via a Twitter account and a new blog. We are hoping to bring some laughs to gardening, because sometimes we both think it needs it.

I am working alongside the wonderful Dolphin & Hewer this year who will be helping me to develop my work interests as well as inspiring me with new ideas for writing and all manner of other exciting things!

Bring on 2012!

Spring has sprung

I can't believe I have not blogged since January but I have been busier than ever with my design business as well as getting Gardening School started. We are nearly there at last and I can't wait to get started. Meanwhile Spring is finally here after a long and bleak winter.

I have been neglecting my photography lately too and since discovering a few Iphone Apps have become very lazy. My Polaroids have remained unused in the cupboard, including my extra special find, a Polaroid SX-70 Sonar in mint condition.  Current favourite is Instagram. This little app is great as you can take photos on the move and perk them up with lots of different filters, particular favourites are the lomo one and the Polaroid one of course. Then post it on Twitter or Facebook if you want to.

 

I also like Hipstamatic, which has different lens and film to choose from. The design of this App is fantastic, it turns your phone into a mini Lomo camera and makes photographing your breakfast a lot easier. If that's your thing of course.

 

 

A good free App  is Plastic Bullet - this is very easy to use and you can scroll through various options for the photograph you've taken and choose the one you like best. This wind up Gnome was taken using this App.

 

The Bath Gardening School Goes Live!

High excitement at the Orchard Studio with the announcement of our new gardening school website going live.

After months of hard work and a lot of emailing and changing things and testing the site and at the same time keeping up with day jobs, it has finally happened.

I wanted to get the gardening school going some years ago but finding the right time when things were more quiet proved impossible, until the end of last summer when I decided it was now or never.

Twitter proved to be an amazing way of finding great people to teach as well as new contacts. The obvious place to hold the courses was at my beloved Botanical Gardens and I was lucky that the council agreed to us using the facilities. I thought long and hard about the kinds of subjects I would want to learn and talked to a lot of people about what they wanted. The result being the current schedule of courses.

I wanted the day to be good fun and for people to be really entertained and informed and fed lots of cake and given a good lunch. 

We are very lucky to have Glenn Humphries, the Curator of Bath Parks coming to give the first guided tour of the gardens. Glenn has many years of experience and knowledge of the gardens and will be talking us through the many amazing trees and planting.

James Alexander-Sinclair from Blackpitts is taking the first course date and I'm reliably informed that he is very good value and extremely entertaining. No pressure on him then!

www.thebathgardeningschool.com