Reflections Following a Year Out

Intro 

I am making this blog post having returned to university following a year out after the first year of my course to consider career and education options. I chose to return to Cheltenham to continue to complete and pursue my Landscape Architecture course/career. This post is to highlight the main highlights and my favourite experiences from my year out.

Working at a Market Garden

The market garden on a sunny(!) September day.

Throughout most of my year-out I worked at a small market garden/farm shop in St Dogmaels, Pembrokeshire. This allowed me to further develop my plant and horitcultural knowledge as well as develop customer service/retail skills in the farm shop. I also developed a knowledge and conscience towards how much the climate/weather can impact food supply chains and infrastructure which is something I will take with me throughout my career. I found this job gave me plenty of time to reflect and consider what I enjoyed, and more importantly what I didn't. This did fortunately lead me back to considering landscape/garden design, and eventually back to my course in Cheltenham. 

RHS Malvern Spring Festival 2024

The finished show garden at the show, which won
a silver medal.

In January I attended about a "Designers' Day" which the RHS was holding at the Three Counties Showground. This, an opportunity for garden and landscape (and prospective!) designers who were interested in designing show gardens, to make new connections, share ideas, and find out more about the technicalities of show garden design and build. Following attending this event, I was linked up with the designers of the Macmillan Legacy Garden, Kerianne Fitzpatrick and TJ Kennedy, and I went on to spend a week in late April helping with the build and planting of their garden. I found this to be an incredibly insightful, edcuational, and fun experience.

The show garden on plant placement day.

This was the first time that I had seen a planting plan and construction detail drawings becoming reality. From preening the plants prior to their placement to helping to build deadwood hedges and washing dry stone walls, I felt involved in all aspects of the build alongside the landscaping team, Design-It Landscapes. My favourite part was positioning plants, which could have been seen as tedious, however I really enjoyed the high attention to detail and seeing the plants bring the hard landscaping elements to life, tying everyone's hard work together.

Working in a Practice

An image from a sunny day on site.

Having been introduced to Luci Clark, an Associate Director of TACP Ltd., an environmental consultancy in Cardiff at my course's end of year show, I was lucky enough to be offered some summer work before returning to university. This was three weeks of work in practice, getting experience of being in an office/practice environment, as well as picking up and improving skills in areas such as report writing, Microsoft Excel, and doing landscape monitoring on four different sites across Wales and the west of England. Landscape monitoring was really beneficial, similarly to building the Malvern show garden, in the way that I could see planting drawings in person when surveying the condition of  planting plots, and bridge the link between drawings and what is built. I also notably improved my plant ID skills and learning about growing tendencies. Some other skills I began to pick up in this time were learning some information about dormice and bats, and their management in infrastructure developments.

Other Experiences - To Conclude

Having also discovered and joined the Young People in Horticulture Association (YPHA) during my year out, I have attended many online and in-person seminars and events which again not only helped me to make industry connections but also learn about careers and parts of the industry which I hadn't considered before. The YPHA also ran many trips and socials to gardens which often involved tours by gardeners. My favourite of these trips was that I was lucky enough to go for a tour of The Newt in Somerset, now one of, if not, my favourite gardens and landscapes. I have really enjoyed my year out from university, and have found it to be incredibly beneficial to me personally, and in the progression of my career. My goals and values have been clarified throughout the year, and I have never felt more ready to progress my education and career.