Just as our gardens are enjoying their final flush before winter, here at The English Gardening School new beginnings are in the making as we book in the last few students who will start the Essential Garden Design Diploma in January.  This month, as our Good Gardening students break for half term, we are taking the opportunity to look back at the experiences of two former students, one from each of our Diploma courses. 

Alumni News

Here at The English Gardening School we often find the time to reconnect with alumni and it was a pleasure to catch up with Holly Johnston who completed the Essential Garden Design Diploma in 2023.  Holly went on to create the Bridgerton Garden for Netflix at The Chelsea Flower Show 2024.  Here, Holly shares how her time on the Essential Garden Design Diploma gave her access to her new career. 

My Change of Career

By Holly Johnston (Essential Garden Design Diploma 2023)

Holly Johnston’s Bridgerton Garden for Netflix, Chelsea Flower Show 2024

I chose to study Garden Design at The English Gardening School because I was ready for a career change. I’d come from the magazine and media industry and wanted something more creative and fulfilling. The ten week format was attractive as a manageable commitment to make when I wasn’t 100% sure if this was a complete career change that I was going to move into.

I grew up on farms and always had big gardens, but I was a real newbie when I started, absolutely fresh. I was hungry to learn and found the holistic approach of the course structure really appropriate. You experience full exposure to the design process: meeting a client, understanding their brief, developing concepts, producing masterplans, then presenting the final design.

The small class size meant there was plenty of tutor interaction. That was really important to me, that I could ask questions – and as someone that was so new, I had a lot of questions! Everyone comes from different backgrounds and there’s this lovely camaraderie where you’re able to constantly talk things through and bring ideas or compare drawings in a really collaborative, lovely way. And then post-graduating from EGS, the door is always open.

Several moments stood out for me. The first was being able to suddenly translate a blank canvas property, through 10 weeks of learning, into an incredible master plan, which was really, really satisfying. Another was hearing designer Nick Bailey speak about his Chelsea Flower Show experience. I was enraptured by his tale of how it came together and knew straight away that Chelsea was something that I would want to pursue.

What surprised me most was how both technical and personal garden design can be. You learn formal design principles, but there’s also freedom to develop your own creative flair. I love that it’s a career where you never stop learning and only grow more valuable with experience. Rosemary Alexander is a wonderful role model for that; proof that longevity and expertise are celebrated in this profession.

Before EGS, I felt unfulfilled in my previous career. EGS gave me the initial roadmap to say – hey, I can do this, I can make a career change, I can start my own business, and I can either go and work for a studio or do my own thing, and that’s really transformed the way that I’m looking at the next couple of decades.

Potting Shed Revelations

By Jo Butler (Good Gardening 2024 – 2025)

Tina’s Garden Log Book

Visiting a garden as a student of The English Gardening School is a privilege. A tour from the Head Gardener explaining their vision and how they execute it is fascinating. But even better, I suggest, is the chance to dip behind the scenes, poke around the greenhouses, nose through the tool sheds and sniff the compost heaps.

At Sandhill Farm House, Rosemary Alexander’s own creation, the front garden was mesmerising in its multi-textured tapestry of woodland planting.

The potting shed was revelatory.

Rows of gleaming forks, spades, rakes and hoes hung in straight lines off nails drilled into the wall. The shelves were labelled “Supplements”, “Pesticides”, “Herbicides” with bottles and sprays stacked in perfect order. On the floor a row of clip-lid boxes each clearly labelled with the PKK ratios of its contents.

The entire set-up bore as much relation to my home potting shed as the garden around it does to Rosemary’s woodland paradise.

I realise this was not a coincidence.

Head gardener Tina Woodward explained all the processes and systems to us, emphasising the strict attention paid to garden hygiene in everything they do. But what impressed us all most was her Garden Book. Compiled every year since she began working at Sandhill, this is a rolling diary which records daily gardening activities as well as every single plant that comes into the garden, its provenance, where it is planted along with a record of its performance. It is biblical in its fatness and encyclopaedic in its content. Tina admitted each year the book starts off pristine and by the end it is creased, dirty, covered in soil and water and packed with information.

I went straight home from that visit and labelled my shelves, and I am in Year One of my own Hortipaedia. I swear the garden is already looking lusher for it.

Rosemary’s Plant of the Month

Nerine bowdenii

Rosemary’s Top Gardening Jobs This Month

1. Plant up all the pots with bulbs for Spring.
2. Lift dahlias after the first frost, clean the tubers of all soil and store in dry compost in a cool, frost free place.
3. Cut down any dying perennials that are looking untidy, putting the waste onto the compost heap.
4. Remove damaged rose foliage to the bonfire or bin to avoid diseases being carried over to next year.
5. Move alpine plants in containers to a sheltered spot  to protect from winter rain.