Transforming Lives through Horticulture with Ashley Edwards, Garden Therapy Specialist

If you're someone who has a passion for cut flowers, our environment and wants to make the world more beautiful, you're in the right place. Whether you're growing flowers for pleasure or profit, I'm on a mission to empower flower enthusiasts and professionals to help change the world around them. Whether you're just starting out, needing help in hand, or looking to scale us to substantial flower business, I'm your Cut Flower Woman. Welcome to the Cut Flower Podcast. So I am delighted today to welcome Ashley Edwards over to the podcast. And I came across Ashley in a roundabout way really. I met a head gardener somewhere else I was doing some wedding flowers at and she mentioned Ashley and also I had done a podcast with Dr. Olivia Tepple a couple of weeks before which was all about Horatio's Gardens. So the two really came together and I thought I know what we should do. We should get somebody over like a head gardener who can really tell us what it's really like on the ground. So Ashley works as a head gardener, I know Horatio's Garden in Stanmore, which for me is one of the probably best known orthopedic hospitals in the UK and certainly the world. If I was thinking orthopedic, I would think of Stanmore. So your background is really impressive because I've been delving into it Ashley. I found a queue, I found Strawberry Hill, I found Longwood Gardens in the US, I found you working in Sicily, I found you all over the place. So what an eclectic mix and what an eclectic background. Tell us about your background, tell us how you got to where you are and what you're up to today. Yeah, sure. It's great to be on the show, thank you for having me. And yeah, I always had an interesting gardener from a young age. My neighbour who lived downstairs, we didn't have a garden when I was a kid but my neighbour who lived downstairs used to let me come into the garden and so seeds and chase slugs out of the garden and things like that. And really enjoyed just being outside and observing things, I was very inquisitive and I wanted to see insects up close and I was really interested in plants as well and how they grew. But yeah, it wasn't until I was, you know, 16, I started working at Garden Centre and wanted to learn more about the plants and that's when I started my training really. So I started with the RHS level two and I did an MBQ before that and then did my RHS and I ended up at Q Gardens and I did a diploma in hall to culture there. So that was a three year course and that's when I graduated, I received a scholarship to go on the RHS and GCA interchange fellowship which is a programme that sends an English student from the UK over to America and vice versa. And so then I worked at Longwood Gardens which is a huge public garden in Pennsylvania. I learnt a lot about what was culture there and it was a completely different kind of ethic to Q which was a Botanic Garden. This was very much a display garden and they used a lot of big machines and stuff like that. So that was really interesting. Yeah and then I came back and then I went away again after a year in London to Sicily where I worked at a cooking school where they taught traditional Sicily and it is which was great. I ate a lot of food and drank a lot of wine and then yeah and also learnt a lot about Mediterranean plants and seeing them growing in their own environment was really interesting to me. Yeah. Interesting, so I think your Mediterranean garden could be quite useful. Yeah, well that would be, yeah I mean we had lots of fruit trees in the garden there. We had pomegranates and figs, lots of figs but yeah it was a really good and interesting experience and I got to teach students how to grow their own vegetables so it was like farm stable ethics. That was really fun. And then yeah and then I got a job back in, I came back, I came to Twickenham to be garden and charge at Shoreview Hill House in Twickenham which is a really beautiful Gothic manor house built in the 1700s. We were kind of English non-state garden so that was really fun and interesting. And then I ended up here in Rohesha's Garden so I'm head gardener here in Rohesha's garden, London and South East so we cover a huge area across London and also a massive area in the South East and we get people coming here from all over here so my job is managing the garden and the volunteers but also nurturing the space and talking a lot with patients and also delivering garden therapy sessions. So it's a great mixture of gardening and working with people which is why not. I was going to say working with volunteers, I'm happy in my past work at Iainbridge Gorge Museum Trust which is a charity and a charity with trust with lots of volunteers. You have to, I mean you're a leader, you're leading the whole thing and their volunteers and they are volunteering their time but it's still quite organised and you're still a massive team of people to organise because the job has to get done doesn't it? It's quite challenging. Yeah, yeah and yeah, well yeah, volunteers are amazing, absolutely amazing and we couldn't run the garden about them but yeah, you do have challenges volunteers, you don't have employees so you know people do go away on the holiday and they're only like, how dare they? But yeah they can be unpredictable sometimes who you're going to have in when but here you know, I've got a garden administrator to trace each keeps, I think keeps on top of everything and it's great because you know we're very organised and we generally know exactly how many people we've got coming in and yeah it works really well because everybody has their own unique skills and it's really nice to be able to match people up to different jobs and we have gardeners but we also have people who are really good at just you know baking cakes or coming into clean all the buildings in the garden and keeping it nice and tidy because it's just really important that everything looks as best at all times because for the patients but also for their visitors you know to come in and see a nice space that's really important. Yeah, I'm going to Dr Liberty Chapel inviting me up to Sheffield when it opens so I'm really comfortable to that just to get sort of in there and see what's going on and you know we've been supporting the charity for a while and I find it all really really interesting and just a whole I find that whole garden therapy and health and well-being and the proof of being outdoors massively interesting anyway and and how I can incorporate that in my life going forwards in turn sort of you know retreats or therapy or you know whether that's I don't know for me it would be adolescents probably who have addiction issues so whether that's drugs or anorexia or bulimia or something because it's an area I know a bit about to invite them to just get outside because they tend to be younger and they tend not to be outside and then so I've got this sort of like in the back of my mind always this driver which says you know you need to be doing this you need to be doing that so somewhere in my future I'm hoping that I'll be able to give something back in that way but garden therapy is really interesting. Well it's powerful you know gardens are powerful and they're often people that have been here say that the garden for them has been transformative really has to in their state here as after a life-changing injury really does transform people's lives because they're able to get out and it gives some people the drive to you know push themselves to do the best they can in their recovery. So there are a long time I mean some people can be do you want to talk about heratias charity a lot of people won't know what it does and how many spinal units and gardens there are. Perhaps just to talk about it some people our listeners will know I know what it is I think it's fantastic but yeah and transformative absolute transformative but if you just let us know what heratias gardens does. Yeah so we're a national charity and we build gardens are fully accessible and they are spaces of sanctuary and they're all built at NHS spinal injury centers so we currently have six gardens and the aim of the charity is to have one at every spinal unit across the country and there's 11 spinal units across the country NHS spinal units. The charity's named Horatias Garden it's named after Horatio Chapel who was a young man who had a very forward-thinking vision. He was working a volunteering at Salisbury at the spinal unit there and he had the idea and the vision that patients really needed a space to go outside of the wall contemplate what's happened off the injury and just have that space in nature and so tragically he lost his life on a school trip when he was 17. Remember it? Yeah yeah very tragic but you know after his death there was a big outpouring of support and love and the money that was raised from that built the first ever Horatias Garden at Salisbury and yeah it kind of changed so many people's lives and people really saw what a difference it made that since then it's you know grown more and more and Dr Olivia Chapel Horatias mother and the founder of the charity really drives the charity forward and yeah it's just an amazing ambassador for garden therapy and not the effect of gardens on mental health for people. I've seen the charity grow over the years for sure and we support it too and what we do but I've seen it you know I went to one of their concerts I think in Kensington actually which was amazing and I've supported the charity as well as some of the work we do but I've seen it and even the website which had a revamp and merchandise and so on I can see it's you know really motoring because in order to get 11 gardens across Spinaly and it takes a lot of income and so you've got to raise a lot of money yeah the gold costs a lot to to build because you often have to deal with surfaces that are uneven and for wheelchair users it's very important to have a flat surface and we use really high quality materials so that they last longer but also that you know it's it has to look beautiful and be functional so all of this costs a lot of money and then on top of that you've got the running costs so gardens cost around 90 000 pounds a year to keep going that's with you know going ahead gardener and a gardener administrator and usually maybe a maybe a trainee or arts assistant plus all of the running costs to maintain the garden but also with patient workshops and things like that so you know that's all money that we raise and we rely upon fundraising events donations you know we have to make this money ourselves in nature yeah it's a real shame and also it's difficult to build in a garden because hospitals were never built were they I mean I look at my local hospital and I think gosh where would they put one if they needed to put one you'd find the space but it's challenging to put it in and also where do you put it and what does it look like and what do you grow because you need 12 months a year and and how do you do that I think you've got the most challenging job in the world actually because it's it's here it's easy and I cut flour it's we close in the winter you know we don't need to worry about January but you need to worry all year round and it's quite what do you grow what how do you manage it what do you do yeah I mean the patients you know patients turn up all times this of year so you're right I mean it has it has to be interest here all year round and that's where the designers come in I mean our gardener is designed by Tom Stuart Smith yeah so yeah he's you know an amazing award-winning designer very thoughtful planting and loose quite loose airy planting really really beautiful and lots of different texture so play playing on texture of leaves and shades of green yeah so even when it's not flowering you've still got this lovely play on texture and I think that's something that people really notice in the garden um so yeah even the winter we have we do have things like hella boards snow drops um we have daffneys and things like this that will provide some interest through winter but really the structure is just really lovely and so in the winter I leave you know all the herbaceous stop standing so you've still got nice structure in the garden and you get frosts and you get cobwebs and things and it looks lovely and fog and then so I breathe kind of cut I think back and um then you get a nice fresh spring growth but yeah it's it does look attractive it's different it's not like it is in summer it's like completely different garden but that's partly interesting it really to see it throughout every season yeah yeah no it's really interesting hmm I'm just thinking of all the different seasons and what it could look like I can't wait yeah it was spring is amazing because we have tons of bulbs so yeah that's another really great time of year um all the tulips now in all sorts love the spring um I think spring is about regrowth and new life isn't it so going out and seeing that is quite yeah yeah I can see why it's transformative and actually see what it is yeah yeah people often reflect on that you know and people see themselves in the plants and they'll know they'll they'll see something growing and they might kind of um yeah they can relate to those plants sometimes tell us about your average day then what's your average day look like my average day is usually very busy um it's it's we usually have maybe five to six volunteers on a day and so um I normally at the beginning of the week I will kind of do a walk around to see what what's what's changing what needs doing in the garden of right all the jobs on our board um and then I will delegate the jobs out and work alongside the volunteers which is really always really lovely and then I mean it changes really from day to day so we could have visits from funders coming in we could have a corporate group coming in to do work with us um we could have a painting workshop which we have regularly we've got music in a garden so it's always some sort of event happening every week and then on top of that I do garden therapy workshops so I'll work one to one the patients and we'll do some gardening together so tabletop gardening and sometimes it's just going around the garden together and just checking it out really and seeing what's around and people might have lots of plant questions that we do get keen gardeners that come in and want to know about plants in the garden they've never seen before so that's always really lovely but yeah usually very busy I spend a lot quite a lot of time talking to people really because that's what it's all about you know talking to patients in the garden explaining what you know what plants are in the garden and why we've chosen them and just having a chat because the staff the hospital staff are so busy they run off their feet and so you don't get so much conversation there because they you know they're just really busy all the other time and with nursing shortages and stuff you know that that makes it even more difficult but in the garden you know the volunteers they have a lot of time and they can chat and and that's great I think the patients really love that but they can come out and have a cup of tea have a chat that's not medical you know not have to speak up and the injury just a nice normal chat just get some reality or just some nice they just say there's something away from medical basically no just kind of get the urine hospital for a while and people do say that when they're in the garden they kind of forget that they're in hospital which is yeah it is because hospitals are built like 1970s 1980s big concrete building I mean I can't remember when Stanmore itself was built but it I remember going I remember going in the 70s to see someone at school who was in there so gosh it must be 50s for me yeah I'm not sure when the spawning unit was built it's a massive site huge so then it was a Victorian hospital originally and it was a hospital for tuberculosis because it was outside of London up on a hill but there was always fresh then but yeah obviously they've added lots of bits onto it now I'm not I'm not actually sure when they built this funny unit but the spawning unit here is actually quite nice because it's one story so everyone yeah everyone has access from their room straight into the garden which is amazing people are in and out and there's no thresholds you know in design so you can come out unaided you can get whole beds out into the garden which is really important so people on bedrests who can be on bedrests for at least six weeks but a lot of the time more than that can be brought out into the garden just to get some fresh air and sunshine and yeah that's a huge mood booster really and yeah so it is it is a very accessible world and it means that we get to know people really well because we've seen them all the times which is really nice so what's been your biggest challenge then over there and what do you think your biggest challenges? I said the biggest challenge is I think in the beginning it was kind of realising I knew very little about Spylon injury when I first started and so it was learning about Spylon and Spylon injury and realised that everybody's needs are so different and you know people even even down to the wheelchairs like the wheelchair heights can be completely different if you're in a power chair you're off in much higher up and also how the injuries really affect people in different ways so some people will have you know the higher they will injury usually the more maybe the less mobility you'll have but yeah some people can't you know lift their shoulders but they might be able to use their arms so it's like really you have to be really adaptive and I think it was a learning curve and had to kind of be very adaptive and let people do it for themselves I think like your instinct is to help people but actually it's about a person being independent and doing whatever they can and you know if they ask for help obviously help them but yeah it's kind of standing back and guiding but not kind of taking over so I think that was yeah yeah it was having that balance but I think I've got it done though but yeah it's the beginning at the beginning like I had this urge to kind of as a gardener you know you get quite particular about things and how they should be done and I think I'd like to really let go of that and if something's been planted wonky that's absolutely fine if you know the seeds aren't quite deep enough you know let's go with it and see what happens that you just kind of have to let let go yeah yeah I think that's one thing I do you know what to teach you to do is that life isn't perfect you know more things like natural like nature like weather is that of your control yeah nature's natural what eats it is out of your control yeah and I think that's probably maybe that's the biggest lesson for us all that we are out of control and that's okay we just let it go on yeah I worry about weeds I worry about weeds and now I've decided to call it rewilding areas there you go it's just to re we should have a rebranded fine so everything it's fine it's fine yeah so what do you think in your career are you most proud of Ashley um I think I mean I I'm very proud of this of what we've created here because I started with the garden so I've been here since the beginning and so I helped to plant here and worked alongside designers you know planting it which was really exciting and then building the volunteer team and becoming established making connections with the world staff so we really you know we have great communication with the world and yeah just creating a really beautiful sanctuary really that has a great atmosphere about it and the team are so lovely you know we've got a lovely volunteer team and it just creates a really positive atmosphere and and when I when I'm here late in the evenings or early in the mornings and I see people just chilling out on their own in the garden that makes me feel really proud because I'm like you know we've created this space for them and and people are really enjoying it and getting the most out of it and so yeah I feel quite proud about that and and in general I feel quite proud to be a head gardener because growing up I didn't really see anyone like me in institutions so I just never really thought it was for me and I didn't even in the beginning really think horticulture in general was for people like me so I'm quite proud that I you know went with my passion and ended up where I am because when you did it there wasn't there wasn't huge about the social media and huge about the young people getting involved in horticulture and that's changing because before that you didn't have your career advisor who said why don't you be a horticulturist and do the RHS exam I would have been like what no I never it was never ever mentioned at school and I think I mean we had another student working for us and he went off to study maths at uni after working here since he was 16 he went off to uni to study maths and we went oh you don't want to do maths you want to do horticulture and off he went and he came home at the Christmas and he said I hate it I absolutely hate it so I need to be outdoors and then he went back in the January and said I've swapped to economics so there's even worse so we came back at the Easter I said now what he said but I decided to do archaeology because I can be outside and that was interesting because from going from because none when he was a career advisor even now they wouldn't have said why don't you be an archaeologist yeah yeah it's quite interesting there's so many gifts to do yeah and I mean horticulture itself is a massive industry and there's so many different roles you could do you can work in a nursery growing plants or you can work in conservation or you could be in the labs you know studying plants so you could be a heck of a nut so you know it's so varied it's kind of a job for everyone so it needs to be promoted more yeah massive industry I think absolutely yeah I hope you know that I try and be like the person that I would have liked to see when I was young so it sounds a bit cheesy but that's why I like to I hope to be and you know I think more and and Instagram does help with that because I've found a whole community there that I wouldn't have found anywhere else so that's that's really great and being on things you know being on like now now I'm a GQT panellist that's a that was a really big thing for me to be able to be part of that and and kind of reach a wider audience and that's been really a really nice experience to go to the live shows and meet audiences and you know you get a great positive feedback very modest you managed to tuck that in at the end you didn't meant for that very modest now I enjoy doing that yeah garden crisis garden's question time it's fun and we always get really interesting question audience are quite funny and they come up with some joky ones as well which is always a lot and the panellists and the team are so nice like the panellists I was really intimidated obviously to know that I'd be next to people like um being word and James Wong and like but everyone is so sweet and lovely so it's a really nice team to work with. I went to the one in Milton Keynes I think it was last summer yeah and we had and they do obviously we called two episodes at once and it was really interesting to see it from where just sort of review a point of view about how it was edited and what they did and I would just stop there and we'll start like it was really well managed stage managed from a potential view I thought it was amazing and and then how they get the questions and how they ask the questions obviously it's not going to be something completely random that uses the everybody I really enjoyed it I thought it was really interesting and you really don't get to see the I thought I thought maybe we'd get to see the questions but we don't you don't get see they you know everyone writes their questions down and I and I want to show and then the editors choose again who's gonna get to ask their question but um we don't see them at all you gotta be good at I'm not really sure about that no so what do you think could smoothing it up but yeah no you had to pass things on from those I mean you'll get questions which you won't know the answer to there isn't you don't know every single planet in the world you don't know every single pest in the world you don't know every single growing condition in the world no you can say well I think it might be there so in my opinion it could be this but it's I found the whole thing really fascinating that like you say they're great panel and it was it was entertaining really entertaining it's nice it's always nice to do that so you're going to do more of that actually yeah I've been doing it for about a year now maybe over a year yeah over a year now so I've done a few live shows I started in I started doing a lockdown so the first ones I did were all um postbag additions and they we did them on Zoom actually at the beginning and then once you know restrictions um we're losing we can meet back up again so yeah it's been nice to go go to have a garden and do them postbag additions from up gardens but also have the live audiences and so I was on on the radio actually last week on Friday on that episode um at the fly army flying museum so that was a good one um and yeah I'll be back on there in September so where do people follow you actually where where are you hiding out in your dream model you can you can find me on Instagram and my um my my Instagram is called plants for well-being that's F.O.R not not the number four so plants for well-being um yeah so I post on there I post I post quite a lot about Horatio's Garden so you can see what the garden looks like this time of year and I also do general um gardening well-being posts and I do um put my links up particularly and stuff up so yeah amazing so you see it all on that oh and also I think the most interesting thing for me is that you do not come from a hall to cover that ground and you didn't grow up with somebody teaching you about the garden or our grandma that had huge space and you could go and plant seeds and spend the summer there you just basically went and learned planting seeds with a neighbor yeah yeah yeah inspirational well I was I think yeah I think that as they say like planted the seeds so like be it able to be in the garden and enjoy outdoor space are my my family you know my mom and my nan and my aunt and my dad growing up they did encourage that and they took me out to the wild places and we'd go to like Richmond Park or Q Gardens even as a kid which I found like very it was like going to theme park for me yeah yeah but just now I never thought I'd be end up working at Q I thought you know that's totally out of mind but then I ended up looking and I was like oh you know things can happen so what next actually any other plans? what next um I mean I mean I know it's love would be great yeah if anyone's listening get me on guard as well oh well we did record yeah I think that um well what's the space so you have to follow your name and find out what you're doing there's a big reveal or a big secret is that what's the space there's not a massive secret but it will be something interesting and um and yeah I would I would like to do um won't be there would be great I'd love to do a bit more minute stuff I do really enjoy it and I really think it's important to have a diverse range of people in haute culture as a face of haute culture and and um and I'm really passionate about gardening the haute culture and how it can benefit us and and I want to you know I want people to realise that gardening the haute culture is a really skilled career and you have to study for years yeah and I think people don't necessarily always realise that and so yeah it's a it's great to be able to kind of promote promote where I can so yeah so who's inspired you actually along the way so anyone in particular that stands out for you there's not like any one person but I've met so many people over the years that um have that passion and and maybe they volunteer a community garden and they've like made a real change in their local community I think it's the kind of grassroots gardeners that inspire me the most and especially when I see like younger people that are starting it now and doing things like guerrilla gardening um like I met um I did a last year at Chelsea I met Tashan who um built the he he run he he runs a charitable grow to know and they um build community gardens that and improve different areas around London and his that all started with the grandfell tragedy um but yeah I met him last year and he was really inspiring because he's doing things like in the community which I love and getting younger people involved and kids as well so so yeah anyone that does anything like I'm like yes yeah me too really inspired oh that right I do I love all that and all that sort of like health well being getting involved doing things in the community I went to a conference last August in the States for the cut growing specialty farmers and there were people doing some amazing things both on making compost which I've never seen before and I learned so much and I just think and then people doing it in car pot and growing in car parks in amazing urban situations to help youngsters out and I just think there's so much out there that you can go looking for it and on Instagram has helped and we just need to keep looking but hopefully this will get you more media opportunities so if there's anyone out there listening you can have actually on your podcast or you can have Ashley and gardeners world or gardeners yeah getting on the TV that will be fabulous because what you're doing is amazing and therefore we need to get it out there more thank you and hopefully this will do that part of that oh cheers and um I want to thank you actually for joining me today it's been really interesting I could tour full day and I get very excited about all of that whole whole to culture and helping well being and and I hope I'm going to come over to stand on yeah please do yeah come visit us yeah yeah yeah yeah say hello not far from me I'm in milking so we're not far from each other yeah thanks I'm really happy to come over definitely I'll show you around here I put it on my to-do list I'm actually going to put that on my to-do list now Ashley visit there you go and yeah we want me there's always tea and cake here so oh gosh I don't need any encouragement then lovely thank you very much for joining me I really appreciate it now it's been a pleasure I can do you take care all right bye I look forward to next week's episode please don't forget to subscribe and rating review on your podcast app we do have some wonderful free resources on our website at the cutflowercollective.co.uk we also have two free Facebook communities which we'd love you to join for farmers or those who want to be from our farmers we have cut flower farming growth and profit in your business and our other free Facebook group is learn with the cutflower for those starting out on their flower journey all of the links are below I look forward to getting to know you all