Career changer profiles

Lee Bestall

Background: Lee has a background in sales and marketing within the hospitality industry and a management degree. After three years as a sales and marketing accounts manager in a high-pressure environment, Lee decided that he needed more out of a job than just money. After handing in his notice, Lee took a job-share position to allow him to study for his RHS General Certificate and City and Guilds Certificate in Garden Design.

Personal highlight, experience or achievement: A highlight for Lee was the ‘great learning experience’ at RHS Garden Wisley where, on top of the course classes, he felt his knowledge of horticulture grew just by walking around and taking in the vast array of plants and listening to RHS staff as they worked. Overall, Lee thinks the experience opened his mind to new ways of thinking and helped him lose inhibitions and increase his confidence.

Aspirations for the future: Lee is keen to pursue a career within garden design and has a strong desire to design and create usable and manageable spaces.

Catherine Clancy

Background: Catherine has a science degree from Trinity College Dublin, and a 17-year career in IT Consultancy and Project Management. Catherine has been working on a contract basis recently, in order to move to a gardening career and has focused on designing and building small London city gardens for friends. Catherine also grows most of her own fruit and vegetables on an allotment, and holds both a C&G certificate in gardening, and the RHS general certificate.

Personal highlight, experience or achievement: Describing the Diarmuid Gavin course as a 'fantastic experience'; the highlights have been meeting inspiring people, expanding her design and drawing skills under Diarmuid's mentoring, winning a Silver Medal at RHS Flower Show at Tatton Park, and successfully organising a garden design workshop in Ireland to raise funds for charity. Catherine sees Wisley as an enormous plant catalogue and being based at Wisley has given her to the opportunity to learn from, and be inspired by, the experts across all areas of horticulture.

Aspirations for the future: Catherine aspires to transfer her project management and organisational skills across to a horticultural role, ideally working on public space development within the city of London. Catherine also plans to continue to design and build gardens. Having completed her RHS General Certificate with Distinction, Catherine plans to continue studying for the next RHS level examination to help her achieve her goals.

David Keegan

Background: David's previous career was as an established photographer for the fashion and portrait industry, where he worked with major record labels and a broad range of magazines. He was a regular contributor to Tatler , Harpers & Queen and the Telegraph magazine. He has worked with bands such as The Cranberries, Ashe and Terence Trent Darby. Over the years David’s work has been exhibited in London, Milan, Dublin and Cork.

In the late 1990s David felt he needed a change and studied for a degree in Furniture Restoration & Conservation; having spent a large part of his childhood on a farm he already had a keen interest in horticulture. During this time he built a roof garden, which re-ignited his interest in plants and gardens. He has since designed and built a number of gardens. He has a good knowledge of plants with a particular interest in exotics. David is passionate about gardening and has a double allotment just outside Manchester where he grows his own organic fruit and vegetables.

Personal highlight, experience or achievement: David grew a selection of organic vegetables for Diarmuid’s garden at RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2005. After nurturing the plants for eight weeks and making sure they were in peak condition for the world-famous flower show, he found it especially poignant loading them into the lorry, pulling down the door and sending them off to the Chelsea showground.

Aspirations for the future: David is already planning his submission for a show garden at the RHS Flower Show at Tatton Park 2006. He also has a number of garden design projects in the pipeline.

Catherine Lawlor

Background: Catherine spent 12 years within the IT industry as a software engineer and team leader. Her passion for gardening began when she bought her own house in January 2000. An enthusiastic amateur gardener who has enjoyed giving advice to friends, Catherine is now looking forward to moving up to a professional level.

Personal highlight, experience or achievement: Catherine was keen to know for certain that she had made the right decision to leave her job in pursuit of a new career. After spending four months living and breathing plants she discovered that she still thoroughly enjoys gardening and is confident she has made the right career move.

Aspirations for the future: Catherine plans to spend the next couple of years broadening her practical experience in horticulture. She will be studying horticulture and design part-time while finding part-time jobs in garden centres, nurseries and public or private gardens. She also hopes to start winning small-scale garden design commissions. She has a strong interest in using unusual plants that will grow in the climate of the North-East of England where she is based. In the long-term Catherine hopes to one day own and run her own nursery.

Celia Preston

Background: Celia was born in India and is today married with five children and three grandchildren. After attending an art school in Paris and Byam Shaw Art School, Celia started her career in dress design in London. This was followed by 30 years of farming arable, soft fruit and apples and pears. The farm was developed into a ‘pick your own’ with a farm animal and pet area, shop and café attracting 60,000 visitors a year. Celia is currently planning garden design projects in the South East and in Italy.

Personal highlight, experience or achievement: One of Celia’s favourite moments was being awarded a Silver Medal at the RHS Flower Show at Tatton Park. She also enjoyed the atmosphere, camaraderie and seeing the reaction from the public to the show garden. Another of her many highlights included visiting Unwins seed merchant’s factory on her birthday and having a sweet pea named after her.

Aspirations for the future: With a background in farming, Celia thinks she would like to work on very big gardens, maybe even parks, and hopes to learn more about large-scale landscaping.

Paula Robbins

Background: Paula had a 12-year career as a pharmacist in hospital and community pharmacy management. With two children, aged four and six months, Paula believes that becoming a mother helped her make the decision to change to horticulture as a career.

Personal highlight, experience or achievement: Paula attributes her success with learning plant names quickly on Garden School down to completing the RHS General Certificate last year. In March, a delighted Paula was told that she had been awarded a Distinction for the accreditation and she is now keen to complete the RHS Advanced Certificate. Working on the career changer’s Silver Medal winning garden at Tatton Park was another high point for Paula, who was responsible for planting. The garden and, in particular, planting received praise from both judges and the public.

Aspirations for the future: Paula has discovered that plants really are her passion and she is keen to work with a designer as a plantswoman. Paula hopes to find a role where the designer looks after all hard landscaping and she is responsible for the planting.

Graeme Rodwell

Background: After starting his career in the catering industry, Graeme then moved into the building trade, where he spent 17 years working on contracts ranging from small building plots in North Yorkshire to Petrochemical sites in South Wales. Finding himself increasingly interested in gardening, Graeme enrolled on a City and Guilds Garden Design course at a local college, where he found his knowledge of the building industry was a great help with the hard landscaping aspect of the course.

Personal highlight, experience or achievement: Graeme had been concerned about getting to grips with the ‘world of plants’, but the trips to gardens in the UK and overseas, RHS courses and the RHS flower shows, resulted in Graeme enjoying the whole experience ‘even areas of the course I wasn’t sure about’ and gaining a wide range of plant knowledge.

Aspirations for the future: Graeme is particularly interested in hard landscaping within garden design.

Jason Stubbs

Background: Jason spent seven years working in Air Traffic Control in the RAF. On deciding it wasn’t the right career for him, Jason joined the police force and worked in communications, which also wasn’t quite right. Having the chance to work in a profession that he enjoys and spending more time with his family was his motivation to take this challenge.

Personal highlight, experience or achievement: The main highlight for Jason was in designing and building an original, beautiful yet functional garden awarded a Silver Medal at this year’s Tatton Flower Show. There were so many other highlights for Jason from having two magazine articles published to joining the cast of Strictly Come Dancing and ballroom dancing with them.

Aspirations for the future: Jason is interested in building and designing creative, unique gardens that offer people something personal to their requirements. After the success of his first ever show garden he’s strongly tempted to create another bold design for next year's Tatton.