Interview-at-a-glance

An abridged conversation between Christopher Weddell, Senior Gardens Advisor at English Heritage, and Rob Brett, Curator at the Royal Horticultural Society Garden Hyde Hall.

Christopher:

What does it mean to be a curator for the RHS?

Rob:

A lot of work! It’s really quite an interesting one isn’t a curator: what does curator mean, I’m often asked that. A curator is all about collection management and providing the focus associated with a garden. It is about making the collections the best they can be and overseeing all aspects of horticulture, including the people. Friends always said that I look excited to be going to work and I always thought this was the norm but obviously it isn’t: we’re very lucky.

Christopher:

I think we are. I took the decision to do a career I enjoyed because you spend so much time doing it, it seemed to be odd to choose something that you didn’t enjoy. And while every job has its moments, what’s better than being paid for something you like doing?

Rob:

We haven’t made millions working in horticulture but it’s about quality of life. I find it quite funny that I got into horticulture because I didn’t want to work in an office but now I’m here most of the time!

Christopher:

I had those thoughts too. I also worked out that I wanted a job with some responsibility, which meant I could pick my moments to be inside or outside, but I seem to have ended up in a job driving a desk, but I still do have a wonderful opportunity to visit gardens so I can’t talk too badly about it.

Rob:

You’ve had an interesting career. How did you get to where you are now?

Christopher:

Well I suppose it did come from that wanting to follow something that I enjoy doing. I spoke to the local National Trust head gardener before I decided on what to do after school and he opened my eyes to the opportunities that were out there. And from there I just kind of followed that direction. How did you get into horticulture?

Rob:

My dad always used to drag me out into the garden on Sunday to help him out in the garden while all my mates would be off playing in the street. I hated it but something must have rubbed off on me as I then fell into horticulture. I wanted to be a rock and roll star and of course that never worked out. So after leaving school, I got a job on a local pick your own farm for the summer and then went to FE college with a Saturday job at the farm. Mucked up FE college so went back to the farm and that’s where it all started. Somebody said to me “Well, why don’t you go and learn about this” so I applied and went to North Wales College of Horticulture to study commercial horticulture for a year. Then the local garden centre were looking for somebody to look after their plants, and so I got that job. And that’s what exposed me to ornamental plants.

Christopher:

I completed a year as a trainee gardener with the National Trust at Sheffield Park, after working on a fruit farm over the summer while at school. I then went off to Writtle College, to do a degree in horticulture because I had a fairly traditional upbringing through school, and university was expected. The minute I think I mentioned horticulture, the teachers really didn’t care. I went to Writtle for four years, which included a middle year at the University of Bristol Botanic Garden. And that really opened my eyes to the plant collections side of things. I was still thinking about historic gardens: I did my dissertation on the authenticity of historic garden restoration projects. I went and found a job as a gardener in a historic landscape around a hotel but felt that wasn’t stimulating enough even though I enjoyed it. I spoke to the head gardeners and curators I’d worked with up to that point to see what they thought and they became my mentors. Previous students from the University of Bristol Botanic Gardens had gone to Kew so I thought, I’ll give it a go! I was successful and Kew really opened my eyes and doors. How did you get to Kew?

Rob:

Kew was a change of life. I went into landscaping initially as that seemed to be where the money was but a friend from the North Wales College went to Kew so that’s how I found out about it. Kew completely changed my direction. From the first project I did on the diploma, what I thought was horticulture is this vast subject, why don’t I actually try and specialise a little bit while I was doing the diploma. And so all the projects I did were based on orchids. When I was due to finish the three year course, a job came up in the orchid department. So that was really when Botanic Gardens became more of my world.

Christopher:

It’s interesting you decided to focus on one topic. I just kept on seeing more and more opportunities, and in some ways that made me want to not specialise so early. And it was almost a conscious decision as I wanted to try everything and I suppose I did summer jobs to work out whether I liked something or not so I went and worked in a pot plant nursery and I quickly decided I didn’t like growing begonias and poinsettias! I didn’t want to go back down that route but it gave me the skills and the commercial speed of nursery work. I realised that the common factor was public gardens and engaging people, and that’s perhaps what I like doing in my current role and what I’ve done in roles previously. I get a lot of satisfaction, about enabling people to be able to to do things; whether that’s enabling a garden team to do a garden project or raise the standards or get the satisfaction of being able to complete something, or a visitor coming along and enjoying the fruits of everybody’s efforts, and then getting enthused by the surroundings behind them. That’s where I think I found a niche.

Rob:

I had this experience within the orchid world that did channel me down into a very narrow area. I got really interested in a particular genera of orchid but realised that I would never learn everything there was about that particular one genera in my lifetime. I was then getting very concerned about being just an orchid person, and I’ve got this huge interest in education as well so being an orchid person was too specialised so I decided to look for another direction. Cambridge Botanic Garden gave me that opportunity when I became the glasshouse supervisor there, which opened up the whole world of indoor plants, exotic plants, cacti, succulents, etc. This was another turning point. Because of my interest in education, I did a master’s degree in environmental development education, which is basically about education for sustainability which led me to the Eden Project – an educational establishment but very much a visitor attraction as well. At Eden, I was a curator for the temperate collections – everything outside the biomes and the Mediterranean biome.

Christopher:

What’s the difference between a curator at the Eden Project and a curator at the RHS?

Rob:

I think they are similar roles because it’s all about managing collections. But it depends on what the emphasis is on in the management of the collections and these are different between the RHS and the Eden Project. The Eden Project was about collections that are going to engage with people, to make them see the importance of plants. But the RHS is also about visitor engagement, with a different focus.

Christopher:

Is there anything that’s kind of on your list that you still want to achieve career wise?

Rob:

I don’t know the answer to that because I think you should always have an open door. From my perspective, what’s actually happening at Hyde Hall is the most exciting time of my life. And it’s because Hyde Hall is the young garden and we’re just about to embark on delivering an arboretum across the garden: this is a Capability Brown moment as we’re not going to see it in maturity anyway…

Christopher:

I found that working for the RHS, the pace of change was fantastic and an amazing opportunity to have.  I went from being a student to working at Kew. But I then got a job with the RHS Wisley, and I did various roles there, loving the change. There aren’t that many opportunities in horticulture to do new gardens, or new garden areas on the scale that perhaps the RHS has been doing over the years with all of its gardens.

Rob:

I think there are ots of opportunities for horticulture, whether it be private gardens or beyond. Over time, Hyde Hall will start to be one of those major competitors as a garden for the East of England and that that’s the excitement.

Christopher:

If you could interview anyone dead or alive, who would it be?

Rob:

Maybe I’ve already interviewed the person! One of my jobs at Kew was to look after the displays in the Princess of Wales Conservatory. I walked in one day and there was a school group withd a number of adults with them, one of whom was Mick Jagger. After they move on, I got a tap on my shoulder and I turned around and there was Mick Jagger standing in front of me, and he said, “So what is it about all these orchids?” It was a fortuitous, most amazing experience but I completely mucked it up at the end because I shook his hand and said ,“thanks for the music”. Probably the other people I would like to interview would be Jim Morrison. Amy Winehouse and Prince.

Christopher:

I’d like to talk with Charles Darwin on the Sand Walk of Down House. So you’re stranded on a deserted island: what plants would you take?

Rob:

That is such a difficult question, because it’s what’s your favourite garden or what’s your favourite plants… I would actually take the practical route because if I was stranded on a desert island, I’d probably want to make sure that there was food and water as it were available. A baobab tree as it stores gallons of water in a mature tree, has fruit and there are medical properties. Aloe vera is an amazing medicinal plant. I think I probably need some plants that would give me a little bit of inspiration so I’d take an orchid too.

Christopher:

As you say it’s such a difficult question: I think if you were to ask me in five minutes it will be different from now. I think I have quite a direct line between my brain and my stomach. So I’m thinking asparagus and figs – a ripe fig warmed by the sunshine can’t be beaten. And I would probably need something for scent to remind me of kind of growing up in my parents garden and my grandparents garden and I have a memory of sowing sweet pea seeds with my grandmother.

With thanks to Bruce Langridge and Will Ritchie of National Botanic Garden of Wales for question format and original podcast idea