This trip gave me more insight then I expected, apart from all the new horticultural knowledge, my mind was opened to different cultures and way of living. The best example I can think of is the length of days during the year. I find living in Sydney Australia there’s very little difference of day/night length throughout the year and the weathers fairly mild as well, in the UK during winter the days are so short and the weather so miserable that it effects the countries. Shops will close for the winter due to lack of tourism and then during the warmer months everything turns into a madhouse of people. I really enjoyed experiencing life away from my norm, it’s made me consider the possibility of travelling more, especially around Australia. It was actually pretty sad how many people from the UK have seen more of Australia than I have, something my husband and I will change in the upcoming years.

I feel like being away from my routine for so long had me really thinking about what I was doing and how I was spending my time. Since coming home I have changed some of my habits and have great plans for my future. I realised that I wasn’t embracing horticulture enough at home and that I could definitely be doing more to be eco-friendly and sustainable. Thinking of these things during the trip has inspired me (and my husband which is great) to start a vegetable garden at home so we can farm some of our own food which will reduce our waste and packaging. I also want to start a compost pile so that any food/compostable waste can be broken down and redistributed to our gardens. I have found a couple good Australian sites that sell a lot of eco-friendly products, many that are reusable options for items that are usually used once and thrown away as well as single use products that break down and can be composted. If you are interested, I encourage you to check out Flora and Fauna and Biome, they’re a good place to start.

I have plans to focus on the weak points in my studying, for me this means the ability to easily identify plants, at least by family. Although this may seem like a basic thing to do I still struggle with it and feel like I need consistent studying and practical work. While I was working at the Chelsea Physic Garden I was shown how to use a key book to identity plants and that’s something I would like to incorporate into my free time to improve my knowledge of plants. Since being back at work I feel like my priorities have changed whereas I’ll spend more time in a garden to hand weed the area instead of spraying glyphosate, as well as mulching more often to reduce weeds. I feel like these changes were inspired by the quality of work and genuine passion seen in the people I was working with when they were tending their gardens.

After experiencing so many different facets of work in gardens I would like my career to be more enriched with different styles of gardens and more diverse work. I’d like to manage unique areas and introduce more plants, I’m looking forward to seeing how things develop in the upcoming months.