The feature picture above shows Stuart Phillips, BALI Chalk Fund Trustee in a hole in the rose garden behind the Palm House at Kew. His feet are on London gravel, and his shoulders are at 14 foot down (or the reach of a 360 degree digger). Stuart has kindly shared this photo of his early days in horticulture as part of our “BALI Chalk Fund at 50” series.
Stuart, Trustee and Landscape & Horticulture Apprenticeships Deputy Lead Assessor thinks back now – let’s go back with him…
What was the best piece of advice you received in your early days?
When it became obvious to my father, who was a head gardener, that I was choosing to ignore his initial guidance not to follow a career in horticulture, he told me to do everything. He said that people tended to specialise as landscapers, or greenkeepers, or groundsmen, or nurserymen etc far too early and that it was better to get an understanding of the entire breadth of horticulture so that, if I was good enough, bright enough and lucky enough to end up in a supervisory or managerial role, where I was allocating work for others, I had ‘done the job’. In other words, I had a realistic understanding of the time needed and potential problems that might arise. It would also mean that I would never be out of work as I could swap between soft landscaping, hard landscaping, designing etc.
One other memorable line from my father was that a good gardener always carries “a pocket knife, a pencil and a piece of string”. You never know when you will come across something needing trimming back or tying in, or that you will need to make a note of for later.
This is just one in the latest series of “The BALI Chalk Fund at 50” series of mini-interviews.