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I am the regional manager covering Kent Surrey and London for the WFGA. There are 18 regional managers covering the length and breadth of the UK.

The WFGA is a registered charity, founded by women in 1899 concerned by the lack of education and employment opportunities for woman working on the land.

These days, the scheme is open to men and women looking to change careers or develop their horticultural knowledge. Alongside workshops and skill days, it operates a trainee scheme called WRAGs which has propelled many trainees to successful careers in horticulture. Currently we work with around 170 gardens across the United Kingdom. The majority have a WRAGs trainee, and there are many more hoping for a placement.

It is a brilliant scheme and I should know: it changed my life. This is my story:

I joined the police in 1986. This photo shows me sitting on a World War II Hermann Bomb weighing 2,200lb in 1987, which was unearthed by construction workers in Bermondsey, London. It was one of the largest types of bombs the Germans dropped on Britain during the Blitz. I was 21 years old.

I spent 30 happy years in the police, spending the last 11 years as a Detective inspector on a murder squad in South London before retiring in 2017. It was definitely time for a change.

I had always loved gardening and decided to do an RHS level 2 gardening course at Hever Castle. There I heard about the amazing, life-changing, WRAG scheme. I learnt that trainees are placed in a garden and trained by the head gardener or owner for two days week for 12 months and paid the national living wage.

I signed up and was very lucky to get a place within six months in a garden originally designed by the renowned horticulturalist Sir Harold Hillier. Significant features of the Hillier garden remain including box parterres, yew hedges, terracing and signature plants including Scots pine and camellias.

My first day of training was in February 2018. It was freezing cold and, by the end of the day, I was exhausted and barely able to move! Gradually my body got used to the physical work as I learnt about the garden throughout the seasons. The scheme ensures that trainees cover a variety of topics including pruning, pest disease and weed control, soil cultivation, propagation, and management of herbaceous borders. I was taught by two gardeners Helen McCready and Serena Crighton-Stuart. Both were very patient with me, guiding carefully at all times, even letting me loose on box balls which I tried very hard not to turn into a cube. Here is a picture of me pruning Jasminum. Probably just as risky as sitting on the bomb!

The year flew by and I was lucky enough to be taken on by the garden owners. I now work there two days a week. In addition, I was also employed by the WFGA as a regional manager. The garden has also taken on a new WRAGS trainee and plan to take more in future years.

The moral of my story is never be afraid to take a leap of faith. I left the police not knowing what I was going to do next, afraid of all the spare time I would have. Now I am occupied pretty much all of the time and have met some fantastic and interesting people along the way.

If you would like to join the WFGA and the WRAGS then the following link will give you all the information. We are also always on the lookout for extra gardens to place our growing list of hard-working and enthusiastic trainees.

www.wfga.org.uk

A potted history of the WFGA

Originally, membership was open to anyone connected in any way with the land, in farming, gardening and allied industries, or those with a keen interest in these matters. Many of the founder members were professional women working in education, gardening, farming and small holdings.

At the outbreak of the First World War, a founder member Louisa Wilkins realised that there would be a shortage of labour on the land and the Women’s National Land Service Corps was launched offering work placements to women, both rural and urban. This movement was so successful that it soon outgrew a small voluntary organisation and was taken up by the Government and the first Women’s Land Army was born.

Between the wars there were difficult years of recession and the Association worked hard to improve the working conditions and status of women in land work and to open up employment opportunities to qualified trainees. The first training scheme in practical skills was set up during the Second World War giving valuable service to those seeking to work on the land. A Garden Apprentice Scheme for school leavers was set – this led to the development of Government Youth Training Schemes.

In 1993 the Association, established the ‘Women Returners to Amenity Gardening Scheme’. Designed to offer ‘returners’ who were considering a career in horticulture, training in practical gardening skills, within private and public gardens throughout the United Kingdom.

In 2014 the name was changed to reflect the change in the type of applicants applying – Work and Retrain As a Gardener Scheme.’

My Gardening Journey!

By Tom Hart Dyke 

Curator  of The World Garden at Lullingstone Castle, Kent

Portrait of Tom Hart Dyke, Award Winning Plant Expert. Writer, Author, Television Presenter, Adventurer. Commissioned by: Mary Dawson http://www.dfmanagement.tv[/caption]

My passion for horticulture started from a young age, my influential and much loved Granny ‘Crac’ gave me a packet of carrot seeds at the age of three and from then on, I was captivated by plants!  Orchids were my first love and fascination; I would often persuade Granny after school to help me scour the long grass of our local golf course in search of wild orchid beauties. After I graduated from Sparsholt College my sense of adventure grew stronger and I followed my plant hunters dream of travelling the world to seek out rare orchids and plants.

I’ve had some extremely exciting horticulturally endowed trips over my green filled lifetime. It’s been an absolute privilege following in the deep rooted traditions of plant hunters of past and present, travelling to the far flung corners of our green globe, risking life and limb in pursuit of some of the world’s most awe-inspiring plants. My travelling jaunts have taken me to places from the high endemism filled volcanic archipelago of both The Canary Islands & Cape Verde Islands, to down under in Tasmania, seed collecting for the Royal Horticultural Society & Kent Garden’s Trust.

You simply can’t beat observing plants in their native habitat to improve your plant husbandry back home. However not all my plant hunting trips have gone so ‘horticulturally swimmingly’. On March the 16th 2000, whilst Orchid hunting in the rainforest endowed Darien Gap, a friend and I found ourselves on the receiving end of an AK-47 stuck to our temples and were held hostage for 9-months before being released! On 16th June, during my Colombian kidnap ordeal, I opened my diary and began plans for my ‘World Garden’ which would contain plants from around the globe planted in their respective continents of origin. My vision for The World Garden was finally born on Easter Saturday 2005, all made possible by the support of family, friends and the community.  Each year we welcome so many visitors, sharing and inspiring new plant hunters, although I still manage to find time to go travelling to add to my never ending plant collection!

Tom Hart Dyke, Curator of The World Garden at Lullingstone Castle, Kent

www.lullingstonecastle.co.uk

John Harrison has been gardening for over 40 years now. As well as writing for magazines and newspapers he’s the author of 8 books including the best selling Vegetable Growing Month by Month. He can be found online at www.allotment-garden.org

The Right Way to Garden

If you ask three gardeners a growing question you’re likely to get four answers at least. Which one is right? Well they all could be. The thing is there’s no perfect way to garden. 

Chemical vs Organic
The big argument in gardening used to be between scientific growing and the muck and magic school, chemical versus organic if you will. Both systems, correctly applied, can produce great plants and crops. Neither system is perfect. 
Chemical growing where the soil is treated just as an inert medium to hold fertilisers is arguably unsustainable. It can be damaging to soil ecosystems and the general environment. Organic systems can work well but if the soil becomes depleted or a pest appears in large numbers, plant growth will be checked and crop yields reduced.

To Dig or Not to Dig?
The modern gardening discussion that has superseded the organic debate is whether to dig over the ground or not. Traditional gardening emphasised the importance of double digging or at least annual single digging to produce the optimum conditions for plants to grow in.
No-dig growers put their effort into making compost and applying it in thick layers on the soil’s surface instead of tilling the soil. Once again, both systems can grow great plants.

The real question: ‘What is the right way to grow for me?’ I could go on with examples of diametrically opposed methods of gardening but I think I’ve made the point. The question gardeners need to ask isn’t ‘What is the right way to grow?’ but ‘What is the right way to grow for me?’
Never mind slavishly following systems and methods that others have laid down.  We’re all different in the amounts of time and energy we have. Our soils vary and our climate varies. London’s climate has more in common with the Mediterranean than Scotland. 
Yes, lets grow organically, it’s better for the planet, but accept that sometimes a judicious application of a chemical fertiliser can rescue a failing plant. No dig growing often works well but with some soils, like a heavy clay, traditional double digging is – in my opinion – a better way to get the soil in good heart and keep it there.
Pick and choose from all the ideas out there in books and on the web, try things out but don’t be afraid to change your ways if they fail. Eventually you’ll find the right way for you to garden.

A Good Cause

I was delighted to be asked if I would write a blog post for the charity which I’ve only recently been supporting. One of my few regrets has been not having a garden so when I reached sixty and semi-retired I took on a half-plot allotment just a few minutes walk from home. That was eleven years ago and has proved to be one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. As well as soft fruit and vegetables I grow plenty of flowers which include pot marigolds (my favourite flowers), cosmos and sunflowers. I’m happy to see wildlife on the plot such as bees, butterflies and foxes, and it’s always uplifting to have a robin keep me company when I’m digging. Above all it’s the overall pleasure I get be it plotting or pottering, and I’m thankful that I’m still reasonably fit and healthy enough to enjoy the plot as I do. That even applies on the dreariest winter’s day when all I do is have a quick round before heading home to do some armchair gardening, browsing through seed catalogues with a cup of tea and a biscuit or two. 

I’m a longtime regular blogger and my Flighty’s plot blog is mostly about the plot from when I took it on. One way I support the charity is by showing it’s logo on my blog as a link to this website. I also follow the charity on Twitter where I’m Sofaflyer . I support this good cause because of it’s aims, and I greatly admire that it’s entirely run by volunteers. Gardening for Disabled has been celebrating it’s fiftieth birthday this year and I hope that it continues to celebrate many more. Mike Rogers – allotmenteer, armchair gardener, blogger and sofa flying book buff.

visit flightplot.wordpress.com

How to prolong the flower season by cutting flowers for fresh arrangements, drying flowers for permanent arrangements and harvesting seed for resowing.

One of the best things about growing your own flowers in a small urban space is a chance to reap a multitude of rewards for your initial investment and endeavour. For the price of a packet of seeds – let’s say some brightly coloured opium poppies (Papaver somniferum) – a bag of compost and either a single large pot or some smaller sized containers – you will be able to grow enough flowers to pick for you home over the summer and arrange with other blooms and foliage stems in hand-tied posies. You can prolong the life of your cut flowers in a vase by searing the stems once they have been cut and ensuring that the water stays clean and free from any bacteria. I do this by refreshing the water daily and adding a teaspoon of bleach. If the water turns green and murky your flowers will have no chance of survival. If you leave some of the poppy flower heads to die off and dry on the stems of the plant they will turn into the most beautiful seed heads which are a work of art in themselves. These can be picked for use in dried winter arrangements that will last all season and look fantastic in a winter wreath or a pine swag wired on with some small fruits such as clementines and sprigs of holly. Finally, to get more bang for your buck the seed heads will contain pockets of hundreds of tiny seeds. Nature’s generous bounty is a no-cost payback. You will know when the seeds are ripe if you gently shake the seed head and can hear them rattle. You need to collect them before they disperse naturally if you want to sow them in a certain space or you can allow them to do their own thing and you will have a lovely surprise when you find your poppies growing up in unexpected places the following year. If for some reason you don’t want them in a particular position then just remove the seedling as it appears. For collecting and storing seed use a sharp pair of secateurs and snip off the head. Put the whole thing in a paper envelope or bag and label straight away. Do not seal them but leave in a cool dry space for a couple of days during which time the seeds will disperse naturally. Remove the casing and clean off any chaff and store them in jam jars until it is time to sow. As they are hardy annual flowers you can risk sowing opium poppies outdoors in the autumn before the ground gets too cold. This is the way to steal a march on the flowering season. If you sow half your seeds at this time of year they will put on a certain amount of growth and you will get some bushy foliage appearing before the plants become dormant as winter sets in. As soon as the weather warms up again they will come back to life and you will have an early crop of flowers. Plant the rest of your seeds in the spring once the soil is warm enough and daylight hours have started to stretch and you will get you second crop of flowers following on from the first thus giving you plenty to pick from early summer onwards. For more ideas and what to buy visit www.urban-flowers.co.uk.

Gardening creeps up on you. It’s not like keeping a pet or having a hobby. One day you’re not interested and convinced that it is something for other people and then suddenly you’ve started. It can begin irrationally, like buying a pot of basil and then taking it as a matter of honour that you won’t let it die and, before you know it you have a window sill full of waifs and strays from your living larder. Then it grabs you by the throat. Pots lead to bigger pots then tubs and finally a raised bed. You can fantasise about those two sleeper high jobs in neat squares and rectangles. Maybe even two or three of them. Raised bits of paradise,explosions of vegetables and soft fruit, maybe even a forcing pot. Radically I couldn’t help myself Swiss Chard, chocolate skinned Dahlias, fennel and honeysuckle. Bliss. So, there’s something inherently healing to the soul in these acts of nurture. It never occurred to me I could care about plants and now I look at them as if their every wilting leaf or discoloured stem is a reproach, a mirror on my inner life. Why does it matter? I write in early contemplation of the words I need to write to preface the Heligan Harvest time and, in reflecting on it I was acutely aware that we live at a time of refrigeration, international trade in seasons and a culture of bland homogeneity of shape and flavour. Time was when harvest was the arbiter of the nurturers craft and that mastery was the difference between abundance and hardship. The gardeners tending care has saved myriad varieties from extinction by supermarket and, as we wake up from our addiction to ease, we realise the strange truth that quality, beauty and joy cannot be shrink wrapped and traded. They are the mark of a brilliant re-emerging localism and it has been saved for us and our descendants by gardeners. Heroes all who refused to bow to the herd and who held up a sheltering shield to protect the black radishes, soldier beans, 17 varieties of rhubarb, the Queen of fruit, the Royal Sovereign Strawberry … the medlars, the turnips of flavour … on and on and on we could go and not a one of them has ever been seen in a supermarket. So long live the gardeners and long live the potential to be a gardener. It only takes a moment and you’re hooked and have meaning in your life and hope in your heart.