By the time we’d finished undoing all the bad workmanship on the house, redesigned the garden and started climbing the self-sufficiency learning curve, I was in search of a new project.

I’ve always been a serial course starter. Never finding a course that I could really get my teeth into and consequently got bored and stopped going. I’ve tried everything from Spanish, to photography, to kick boxing and yoga (well I have kept the last one up at least). I think the problem has always been that I’ve gone to local colleges etc and picked from their syllabus rather than actually figuring out what course I wanted to do and finding somewhere that does it.

So with my rejuvenated obsession with gardening, I began to realise that my knowledge was most definitely lacking. I’ve got a strong biological sciences background so can often make an educated guess but (and I’m slightly ashamed to say this) I didn’t know the difference between a perennial and a biennial and all those other gardening terms and I was beginning to appreciate that this was quite a hindrance…

Where I live there is an agricultural college over the cattle grid and low and behold, they operate the RHS horticulture courses!

http://www.rhs.org.uk/Learning/Education/exams.htm

Somehow, I managed to get the very last place on the course that started in September 2007. Six months down the line and I’m proud to say I’m still going and loving it. I was a bit apprehensive about going in to a class of people that would know everything about plants (my ability to identify plants is minimal to say the least) and that I’d be out of my depth. Yes, there are times when I hang back and try not to look the tutors in the eye in case they ask me a question (normally when we are identifying plants each week!) but 95% of the time the lessons are hard enough to hold my interest but not so far over my head that I’m floundering. Like most things, some of my classmates excel in areas that I don’t and some I excel in that they don’t, so it’s happy equilibrium really.

I would thoroughly recommend the course, in fact, I’m trying to convince my mother to do it! It’s great for anyone that’s genuinely interested in gardening and wants to either cement their knowledge or learn more about areas they’re not so sure about.

I’m starting at level 2, which is roughly a GCSE and the syllabus can be found at:

http://www.rhs.org.uk/NR/rdonlyres/85C8454D-68AD-47C0-A506-8944BE880078/0/level2syllabus.pdf

It takes 18 months the way I’m doing it (one night a week) so it’s a long term committment but each week I’m glad I went – even on those dark and dreary winter nights when I’m doing battle with my brain and not wanting to leave the fire! But many of my classmates come from up to 20 miles away so I can’t complain when it’s literally on my doorstep…

Most days we’re in a classroom but occassionally we go over to the glass houses to do cuttings, grafting etc. And in the lighter evenings we walk outside looking at the plants in the grounds of the college.

If you don’t have to work full-time or can organise a day off a week, I would recommend doing a daytime course as it means you can get out and about and see plants in situ in the daylight! Initially, I thought I’d go on to do Level 3 and then the Masters… we’ll see how the exams go in Feb 09 I think!