Hidcote Manor

I spent two weeks at the Hidcote Manor, it was the only placement where I slept where I worked and boy was it nice to be able to wake up and head straight down to the lunch room. I had a beautiful view of the old garden from my window and a library downstairs to look through.

Something interesting about the garden is that it is still a work in progress, the gardeners speculate on what they think the gardens would’ve been previously and what plants would’ve been used. It’s still evolving to be restored to its previous grandeur, they have a lot of knowledgeable staff and many dedicated volunteers to tend to the garden.

The very last day of my placement was the one I enjoyed the most, it really was a wonderful morning. I got to work in the kitchen garden collecting sweet peas and other flowers. I spent my morning with a very experienced volunteer who trained with an advanced florist, she taught me the basics of making flower bouquets and we arranged different flower bunches that people walking around the garden could buy.

A great thing that I got to participate in was a couple of plant identification walks, my favourite one was where we walked through the long border and talked about the roses. As we went through them we were taught about the history of roses and were able to identify different types in the garden bed. It was fun in the days afterwards to work in the same garden beds and remember everything you were taught.

I’ve never been very interested in lawns, but getting out the snips and doing some lawn edging was pretty fun. It’s another one of those particular, super tidy things you can do in a garden to make a difference. While I was there, myself and Joel Smith, the other winner of this award were given the opportunity to fill in some gaps in two of the garden beds. We were given a list of plants we were able to use as well as some time to research them, we discussed our plan and planted them out where we thought fit best. I felt like it was a pretty big deal to have another horticulturist leave his area in the hands of students, especially in such an important garden. I really appreciated that he gave us that chance and hands on experience to make a difference and leave our mark back at the Hidcote Manor.