This talk and all our lectures are FREE for Friends of the Botanical Gardens to attend. Members of the public are also welcome to join us on payment of £5 at the door on the day. Live talks are held in the Education Centre in the grounds of the Botanical Gardens - easily accessed via the Thompson Road Entrance.

In this talk, horticultural lecturer Richard Brown will provide all the information needed to propagate, germinate and grow melons and cucumbers and other members of the curcurbit family.

He will aim to explain why horticulture is good for our physical and mental health as well as taking us on his own therapeutic gardening journey, to find the lost Victorian melon, the ‘Hero of Lockinge’.

Richard is an experienced gardener and is currently Lecturer in Horticulture at Wakefield College, a qualified Horticultural Therapist and a Winston Churchill Fellow from 2013 where he studied the benefits of horticulture for health in Canada and the USA.