Informative and inspirational events,
talks, courses and workshops

The Garden House Summer School

Monday 11 July - Thursday 14 July

***** This event has now finished *****

Come and join us for a horticultural extravaganza and learn from the experts! Thinking about a career in horticulture or just love plants and gardening?  If so this four-day course is perfect for you – join us, Monday 11 July to Thursday 14 July.

The Garden House Summer School is our popular ‘hands-on’ summer course that takes you behind the scenes at several inspirational gardens and nurseries.  Suitable for all levels of horticultural knowledge and skills, the course will include plant identification, pruning, propagation, general maintenance and care of vegetables, herbaceous and shrub borders.

• Monday 11: The wonderful Hankham Organics in East Sussex

Meet the Hankham team and learn all about organic gardening in this great nursery. Hankham provide a green box scheme, growing a large variety of seasonal vegetables and fruit throughout the year, both outdoors and in a large greenhouse, for delivery to homes and businesses throughout Sussex (including two long established worker’s co-operatives, Infinity Foods in Brighton and Trinity Wholefoods in Hastings) www.hankhamorganics.co.uk

• Tuesday 12: Our second day will be spent at an award winning herb nursery, Highdown Herbs

The owners, Janet and Arthur have won many medals at both Chelsea and Hampton Court Flower shows.  They propagate their own herbs and have an incredible selection of beautiful herbs that really are irresistible!   Recently they have diversified and now grow a fantastic selection of grasses – we’ll learn about these wonderful and versatile plants and how to propagate them

• Wednesday 13: Experience the true magic of the stunning gardens at Gravetye Manor, which are very special and can be considered amongst the most influential in English gardening history. The manor became the home of the creative, innovative and revolutionary gardener, William Robinson in 1884. Robinson spent his remarkable life as a professional gardener and botanist, but made his fortune through writing about his experiences and ideas on horticulture.  Robinson’s ideas about naturalised plantings, allowing nature to flow through the garden, were ground breaking.  Summer 2010 saw the appointment of Tom Coward as Head Gardener. Having worked for 3 years alongside Fergus Garrett at Great Dixter, his experience has proved second to none in tackling this project. His focus will be not only on conserving and re-creating Robinson’s work but also progressing the garden in homage to his experimental style of gardening. We will work alongside Tom who will guide us through various gardening tasks at Gravetye.

• Thursday 14: Finally, we’ll spend the last day of the course in a local Brighton garden – a practical session where you can really get stuck in and learn, through experience, how to maintain your beds and borders. To round the week off we’ll enjoy a delicious early supper together at The Garden House, Brighton, provided by us from produce gathered in our garden – a final opportunity to consolidate what has been learnt and exchange ideas.

Cost: £125 – this includes coffee and croissants each day, plus the final day early supper.  Transport is under your own steam or in shared cars, meeting each day at a different venue. Each day begins at 9.30 and ends at 3.30 – except for the last day when we will have supper together at approximately 5.00pm and finish at around 6.30.

Just be prepared to join in, learn and have fun!

Contact us for more information »