I wanted to take this opportunity to tell you about an up coming trip that I will be going on. During November and December this year I will be leaving the shores of England and travelling to New Zealand and the USA in order to study roses and work with the people who grow and care for them. This trip is a Fellowship funded by the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust, these guys are a fantastic charity and a wonderful bunch of people. They fund British citizens to travel abroad in order to gain experience knowledge, or engage in a worthwhile enterprise so that their life, their work or their community benefit. Please please please have a look at their website and I can't encourage you enough to apply to them for your own fellowship. www.wcmt.org.uk.
The reason behind my fellowship is that our Head Gardener here at Mottisfont (David Stone) will be retiring next summer and I wanted to take the opportunity to expand my knowledge of heritage roses as much as possible in the time he has left here. For those of you who don't know, David has been the Head Gardener here since 1978 and was appointed by Graham Thomas.
On November 6th I will be heading for Auckland and will be spending 3 weeks in New Zealand hopping between North and South Islands. In my time there I will be experiencing some truely beautiful gardens and learning all about the roses they grow, how they grow them and sharing knowledge and experiences with some great gardeners. Then once my time in NZ is up I will be heading straight to California for a couple of weeks to experience first hand some of the gardens that I have only ever read about! And having seen the lists of roses grown out there I am almost shaking with excitement. From California it will be on to New York with particular attention on winter work and protection. This is something I am very much looking forward to as we have a few very fussy roses at Mottisfont which don't do well in our winters.
I will of course be writing this blog every week so you guys can all keep up to date with where I am and what I'm doing. I hope you all have a great weekend!
Have a brilliant time!
ReplyDeleteI do hope on North Island you do see my friend Georgina's McGreedy rose garden. The collection is her mission, and McGreedy approves.
ReplyDeleteIn California, from where I write, I know you'll have the best time. Try to stay grounded, because the rose gardens here have me aux ange. Can't grow all kinds, but what we can is splendid\\
Our latest McGreedy acquisition for our garden is Grandma's Pink, such a sweetie. I usually go for scent, but made an exception in this case..