This Week’s Guest Blogger is Peter Brown who has recently retired after a lifetime in horticulture
My name is Peter Brown, I live in South Croydon, Victoria, Australia and I have been involved in Horticulture for all my working life. I started my apprenticeship in Gardening and Turf Management in December 1972 when I was 17. I completed my apprenticeship in December 1975. In that time I worked as a Landscape Gardener doing residential and commercial landscaping works and also in a Retail/Wholesale Nursery growing the plants during the week and selling them on Weekends at the retail outlet until 1982. I then applied for and became a trade teacher at Oakleigh Technical School. I commenced my Diploma of Teaching in 1983 where I studied two days a week (Mondays and Tuesdays) at Hawthorn Institute and the other three days I taught at the Technical school teaching all aspects of Horticulture to Nursery, Gardening, Turf and Landscape gardening apprentices. Initially I only taught certificate 2 and 3 in the trade areas as well as I developed a Certificate 2 Horticultural course for people with intellectual disabilities a course which is still running at Holmesglen TAFE, and later I started teaching Diploma subjects as well.
During my time in teaching I have had many roles from Team leader to Head of Department and everything in between. I also branched out from Horticulture in 2000 and started to teach students studying in Conservation and Land Management. I have been involved in the Horticultural Therapy association of Victoria for many years and find this an interesting and essential tool for helping people who have been involved in some sort of accident where we use horticulture as therapy to help them to rehabilitate.
I recently retired from teaching after 38 years and look forward to spending the next phase of my life with my wife in the garden, on the golf course and travelling around Australia.