Meet the people who ditched the grind for the garden
Is your garden your happy place? Have you ever dreamt of swapping your uninspiring 9-5 for a more fulfilling career tending the land as a horticulturist? You are not alone because the industry is enjoying a boom in interest and enthusiasm – people simply can’t get enough of retraining as gardeners, it seems.
Last summer the RHS reported a 25 per cent increase in applications for its diploma in Horticultural Practice, a six-fold oversubscription of applicants to places.
The diploma is a two-year course (known as “Level 3” and “Level 4” to those within the industry), that’s the equivalent of an A level, plus the first year of a degree and, crucially, it’s a ticket into the horticultural industry.
At Kew Gardens, where Tim Hughes heads up the School of Horticulture, whose alumni include Alan Titchmarsh and Alys Fowler, application numbers for the apprenticeship scheme are fiercely competitive. “I mean, we’re talking about 720 applicants for six places,” he says.
The lockdown effect
New students may come from all walks of life, but similar reasons for a move into a more outdoorsy career come up time and again among those who’ve made the leap.
The impact of the pandemic can’t be overstated. Not only has it encouraged many to scrutinise their career satisfaction, work-life balance, happiness and wellbeing, but for those who were furloughed or lost their jobs due to Covid, a new line of work had become a necessity.
Rob Coate, who is 28, gave up a career in film and television after suffering from a burnout exaggerated by lockdown. “You look around at the people at the top and those who’ve been around a long time and you see that it doesn’t really get any better or easier,” he says.“The money and prestige was all there and waiting but it didn’t spell happiness really.”
Rob took advantage of a Lambeth council scheme to offer those under 30 and on universal credit the opportunity to retrain as a gardener for free. “I haven’t looked back since,” he says.
The call of the wild
A job in horticulture is increasingly appealing because indoor jobs take us away from the nature that so many people have come to rely upon for their wellbeing. And the range of al-fresco jobs under the horticulture umbrella is naturally quite wide: from maintenance gardeners to those running nurseries, floristry to landscape design. It’s quite simply the ideal profession for those who long to spend more time outside.
“There’s a huge range of careers that can be had,” says Tim Hughes. “It’s not all about doing a laborious job digging outside in the cold. Horticulture is an applied science and teaching people how to grow plants, propagate plants and create and maintain landscapes helps them to develop a career with a really positive action to it.”
Worthwhile sacrifices
While the spiritual rewards might be great, horticultural roles are not known for being lucrative – many career-changers end up taking a pay cut, with the average salary coming in at £21,000 and rarely rising above £30,000.
Paying for the training can be financially challenging, too. There are dozens of charitable horticultural training endeavours that can help, but few pay enough to manage bills on top.
But where there’s a will there’s a way, as the old saying goes, and Katherine Richardson, 41, is a great example of making sacrifices to chase her dream. She’s about to embark on the RHS Level 2 diploma while doing a part-time desk job to pay the bills, after spending two years relocating to Devon to cut her overheads.
“It was a complete life change,” she says, “but gardening for me has been truly life-changing. The community I’ve found are the kindest, most supportive bunch of folk I could ever have wished for. It feels like I’ve come home.”
‘Gardening was always very much in me’
Rebecca Fincham from St Albans – publisher-turned-garden designer
On paper, Rebecca Fincham’s career looked pretty enviable – a publicity and events manager for publishers such as Faber, she organised literary festivals and managed book tours for authors including Carol Ann Duffy and Adam Kay. “I loved it and I did find it fulfilling,” the 43-year-old says. But, in 2018, after 17 years in the role, she was feeling the need for a change.
Then two things happened in the course of the same week to crystallise her decision to leave the industry: “I became a mum and got listed as a Bookseller Rising Star,” recalls Rebecca. “It was a real moment of being pulled in two different directions. I was starting to question what I wanted from my life and how I wanted it to look next.”
Becoming a parent, Rebecca says, “returned me to my own childhood, which was in the countryside”. She grew up on a hop farm, surrounded by sheep and hops, and comes from a long line of hobbyist vegetable growers.
As a child, she says: “I was always in the garden helping to pick strawberries, deadhead sweet peas and water the tomatoes in the holidays.” Suddenly, her home in a city with a tiny courtyard garden didn’t feel right.
It took two further milestones for Rebecca to finally accept a place on the RHS Level 2 gardening course, which was spread out over 18 months and cost £1,500. “I turned 40 and life was getting intense in the way it does at that time – grief was hammering down the door after the loss of friends and relatives. I started to realise that life is short and you have to take what you want to do and get on with it – you don’t always get a second chance.
“I think gardening was always very much in me,” she says. “But I’ve learnt that what I get now is visibility. I do a morning’s hard work and I can stand back and see what I’ve done.”
Rebecca’s currently finishing her Level 3 Plants & Planting for Garden Design while maintaining and designing local gardens, looking after her own allotment and volunteering her publicity skills to run the National Garden Scheme’s Hertfordshire Instagram account.
“The change of career and working outside has sustained me through some of life’s most difficult challenges these past few years,” she says. “No doubt: the coldest, wettest day on Hertfordshire clay rivals the best that publishing could offer.”
@rebeccafincham_
‘I realised gardening could be more than I thought’
Nick Wood from Devon – from the arts to horticulture
Some might say Nick Wood had good foresight. “I quit all of my jobs in 2019 to take a placement with the National Trust for Scotland: a year on its heritage horticulture course,” he says. “Which was sort of lucky timing!”
Nick, who is 33, had previously worked in the arts in Edinburgh, which meant a constant juggle of zero-hours contracts combined with his own creative practice. “I was working all these jobs and then spending my free time in the Botanic Gardens. I did a couple of projects that touched on plants and plant history, looking at the socio-political history of buddleia. I was spending all this time theoretically among plants and just thought, ‘Hang on, why am I not doing this more practically?’”
Nick’s fascination with plants led him to more volunteer placements with arts establishments, such as the Jupiter Artland sculpture park and gallery outside of Edinburgh and the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester, which he managed alongside his day jobs. “It made me realise that it could be more than I’d thought.”
Transitioning from a career in the arts to one in gardening has been transformative: instead of being stuck in a one-bedroom flat with no garden, Nick rode out lockdown in a 64-acre garden. But he admits that both are equally financially precarious. “I think the pay is still pretty poor,” he says. “There’s a lot to be done with representation in horticulture.”
He’s benefiting from heavily subsidised accommodation currently, but suspects the future could be more difficult. “A lot of these gardens are in really affluent areas. Finding accommodation nearby on a very low wage isn’t going to be fun.”
After retraining “in the middle of nowhere in Dumfries and Galloway” for a year, Nick landed a spot on the three-year traineeship programme run by the Professional Gardeners’ Guild, which takes place in historic gardens around the country and is supported by the Studley College Trust.
“I’d say the PGG is pretty great but it’s very specific to someone who can uproot their life for three years,” Nick says. “But if time allows there are always local community growing spaces and allotments; if you can get access to those to build your own knowledge you can dip your toe in.”
‘What I do makes me feel better about myself’
Danny Clarke from Bromley – the celebrity career-changer
You might recognise Danny Clarke from gardening shows such as Alan Titchmarsh’s Love Your Garden and Channel 5’s Filthy Garden SOS, or for winning a Silver-Gilt medal at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, which Danny did last May. But 26 years ago he was a struggling self-employed salesman. You could say he was a very early adopter of the trend for ditching the conventional 9-5 for a horticultural career.
Now 66, Danny was 40 when he “went off in a different direction and became a garden maintenance practitioner”. The move was by chance, Danny explains, when he got a phone call from a woman who wanted help with her garden, and had heard about him through a mutual friend. That woman became his first client but also his mentor: “She would teach me how to look at the world through a different prism,” he explains, “and her gardening knowledge was boundless.”
Soon, Danny was approached by other potential clients and had to choose between his old day job or retraining. “It was a no-brainer, because I loved it so much. I decided to do it full-time,” he explains.
He enrolled in a year’s garden design course at a local horticultural college and went on to start his own design practice, the Black Gardener. “It’s really nature that makes me feel the way I do, and gardening is the vehicle to get me close to that. What I do is really good for me, it makes me feel better about myself and the world around me.”
‘I was in awe of everything. It felt as if my life had a purpose’
Katie Needham from Leighton Buzzard – the Gen Z gardener
Katie Needham was 24 and living in Brighton when she decided to become a gardener. “I’d moved there to study sculpture, which I loved at the start, but with the cuts to funding at the university I lost my way. I didn’t know what I wanted to do afterwards and the future looked a bit blurry. I thought, I can’t leave and move home just yet. I just felt like I had failed.”
Instead, she stayed in Brighton and took a job in a shop. “It wasn’t until the first lockdown that I felt like I needed to do something and push myself and meet new people. So I applied to volunteer at a community allotment,” she recalls. “And it was brilliant. It was the best time. I met the most incredible people and it was almost addictive. I felt like I could see colour again.”
Katie persuaded her manager to let her take Tuesdays off so she “could get my fingers in the soil. I felt as if my life had a purpose. I was in awe of everything.”
With some encouragement from fellow allotmenteers, Katie handed in her notice and moved home to take up the RHS Level 2 course, which she was eligible to do for free. While there, she got a placement at a garden through the charity Work and Retrain As a Gardener Scheme (Wrags).
She admits that she had to turn down her first offer of the part-time scheme because the pay was too low to make her finances work.
“Fortunately,” she says, “since then I’ve managed to build up a portfolio of other freelance work, which has allowed me to take on a new Wrags placement at a beautiful and historical garden, so it’s been worth the wait. You get to see a garden over the seasons. It was such a great experience and gave me the confidence to start my own gardening business.”
Increasingly, her sculpture degree is coming to fruition, too. “It feels like a process piece, building up someone’s garden from scratch,” Katie says. Looking to bolster her design prowess, she’s landed a place on the KLC School of Design course in London, and is funding the £10,975 course fees through her self-employment as a gardener.
“Gardening slows down the pace of life and that’s what I needed,” Katie says. “I think a lot of people of my age are considering a more vocational route now. We’ve all had time to think about what we really want to do in life. We’re going to be working until we’re 70, so it makes sense to do something that makes you happy!”
