This online talk and all our lectures are FREE for Friends to access. Members of the public are welcome to join us for the live-streaming of the lecture for just £5. Please register, pay in simple online check-out and you will receive details of the Zoom link to the lecture.
Claire Margetts will share some of the highlights of her 18 months on the National Trust's first-ever Sissinghurst Scholarship, which aims to train aspiring Head Gardeners of the future. We will discover what it is like to live and work at Sissinghurst, one of the world's leading gardens during a period of 'Vita Revitalisation' under the tutelage of Head Gardener Troy Scott Smith and the brilliant Sissinghurst team.
As part of her Scholarship, Claire has also spent time with the leaders of many other inspirational gardens, including Bodnant, Hidcote, Great Dixter and Beth Chatto’s in the UK, at Giverny in France and at Chanticleer, Filoli, Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, Brooklyn Bridge Park, Highline Garden and UC Botanic Berkeley in the US.
Claire will describe not only the art and craft skills she has gained but will share her hopes and dreams for her future in the garden; her inspirations and explore why she thinks this ethos has helped prepare her for some of the challenges faced within the horticultural industry - skills and resource shortage, diminishing soil and plant health, and climate and biodiversity loss.
Claire is currently Senior Gardener at Sissinghurst Castle Gardens, with previous career experience spanning many industries, including the visitor economy and a climate-science expedition to the Arctic. It wasn't until later in life that Claire pursued professional gardener training at Aberglasney Gardens, RHS studies, English Heritage's Historic Botanic Garden Training Programme, a season at Iford Manor and ran a sole-gardening operation on the Fonthill Estate, Wiltshire.
She is enjoying finding her roots in horticulture, having grown up on a plants nursery and discovering her great grandfather to be a Head Gardener and Carter's Seeds merchant in 1917. Claire has written for Hortus Journal and The English Garden Magazine. She was featured in Gardens Illustrated ‘22 Ones to watch in 2024’
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