By Georgie Johnson, Horticultural Trainee
This Wednesday marked one year since the start of my traineeship at the Garden Museum. I’ve seen the gardens shift through the seasons, finally becoming once again almost the same place that met me on my first day in May 2023 – though not exactly, thanks both to our interventions and the unpredictability of something as alive and personable as a garden.
Since I’m coming to the end of my time here, I’ve been asked to look back at some of the highlights from my traineeship. It’s been hard to choose, not only because I have a brain like a sieve (thank god for the trainee diary I have to keep), but because often the best things about working in a garden are so small and fleeting I don’t stop to commit them to memory, let alone paper (or notes app). Honourable mentions go to: the sweet smell of Sarcococca lifting my spirits in the frigid depths of January; the way the late afternoon light hits the dry garden in early summer and makes it glow; seeing the first tiny Echium wildpretii seedlings appear after what felt like months of impatient watching; blue tits clinging on to the soaring flower spikes of Melianthus major; finding a cool bug and posting it on Instagram because I know at least a dozen gardeners will help me ID it.
Nevertheless, I’ve flipped back through my notebook and scrolled through the photos on my phone to come up with my top 11 – for some reason – highlights. In no particular order:
The golden hour pint I had at the end of my first time at Chelsea Flower Show
My second day on the job I was thrown in the deep end and sent off to help plant up Sarah Price’s show garden. It was a day of emotional extremes – at lunchtime I was so overwhelmed I had a cry in a portaloo, but by sunset I was completely in love with everyone on the team and so proud to have helped even the tiniest bit on such a beautiful garden. And that might have been the most delicious pint of my life. (Although for weeks afterwards I was waking up in a cold sweat at the thought of losing my balance and snapping a ‘Benton Olive’ iris.)
Deadheading ‘Cedric Morris’ sweetpeas
Or more accurately, finding any excuse to put my whole face in the mountain of flowers outside the museum entrance every time I walked past. Particularly because it now fills the greenhouses yet again, this is the scent I will always associate with my year here.
Seeing Prospect Cottage for the first time
I had barely put my bags down after arriving for my placement at Great Dixter when we got a call: people were heading over to Prospect Cottage, so we bundled into gardener George’s car and chased the sunset across the Kent border to catch the last orange rays beaming over the shingle desert at Dungeness. Head gardener Johnny Bruce showed us around the dreamy garden and cottage, his two dogs racing between driftwood posts, stone circles and mounds of silvery foliage. Since, famously, the boundaries of Derek Jarman’s garden are the horizon, Johnny eventually had to chase after them to make sure they didn’t get hit by a car, so we said our goodbyes. It was a pretty magical way to start the week.
Researching Frank Walter for the exhibition greenhouse display
I feel so grateful to have been working at the museum during the first solo exhibition of Antiguan painter Frank Walter’s work in the UK. It was amazing to spend time researching Walter’s life and work, looking for inspiration for the plants, labels and staging in our exhibition greenhouse. He was a fascinating artist, thinker and gardener – I hope to get to see his work again.
The rosemary hedges in bloom at La Petraia
Clouds of pale blue spilling over walls – vibrating with bees, beautifully matched with zingy green Euphorbia characias subsp. wulfenii – was almost as beautiful as the view from the gardener’s cottage over the Tuscan hills.
Making new gardening friends
It’s notoriously hard to make new friends in your thirties, but I’ve found the solution: become a gardener. Over the past year I’ve been lucky enough to befriend so many excellent gardeners – we’ve worked together, gone for drinks together, made banners and shouted at protests together. We’ve shared seeds, gossip and job opportunities, and plotted about how we can make this industry better. Though often idyllic, horticulture is far from perfect – it can be underpaid, undervalued, and can be inaccessible and exclusionary. Finding people to both commiserate and scheme with is the only way to cope with it, and hopefully change it.
Getting in the pond at Beth Chatto’s
I’ve written about this already so I won’t go into detail, but getting in a pond on a sunny day is just good clean fun. Can’t speak to what it’s like on a not nice day.
Literally every minute of my week with John and Fiona Little at Hilldrop
We drilled holes in logs and stuffed sheep’s wool into a box for solitary bees and bumblebees (respectively) to nest in. We sanded and painted lengths of pipe to stuff with twigs and fill with water to make a lagoon for hoverflies – then strapped them to trees twenty feet up. We weeded in crushed concrete, brick and other waste materials from the construction industry. I met bristly oxtongue and hawkweed oxtongue for the first time. I spotted my first great crested newt, learned to identify a bee fly and saw a spooky white flower spider fully eating the head of a miner bee (all thanks to Benny Hawskbee). We talked and talked over delicious home-cooked meals. I met gardeners, designers and farmers from as far afield as Baltimore, all of whom are drawn to Hilldrop as a place fizzing with ideas about how to make spaces that hum with life, both non-human and human alike. And as promised, I didn’t learn a single latin plant name.
Staking the enormous Dahlia tamaulipana in the courtyard
Hammering a stake bigger than me into the ground to help this gorgeous giant look a little more shapely? Deeply satisfying, 10/10 kind of gardening job.
Trotting around Great Dixter on a damp morning collecting seeds
I spent one day working in the nursery at Great Dixter, and as I followed nursery scholar Sam round the still dewy gardens collecting seeds and cuttings for propagation, I thought: ‘I can’t believe this is actually a job’.
Tuesdays with the Garden Museum volunteers
Last but by no means least, the garden volunteers are one of the best things about this job. They give up their time every week and in all weathers to help Head Gardener Matt and the Horticultural Trainee keep the place looking good year round. Some started this year, others have been here for longer than it’s polite to mention, all are excellent. I’m deeply grateful to them for welcoming me, and teaching me so much.