Clare. Hello. Very good chance to meet you here. I'm here at
Chelsea which I guess is the deep end. Completely the deep
end. Thrown in. Not quite in the job yet but how exciting to be
here. I suppose the first thing that everybody would want to
know about is - are you a gardener? I have been a
gardener since I was with my grandfather who grew his prize
leeks. He told me there were prize leeks. I'm not sure I
saw the prizes. It's what I do. It's
what I do when I don't go to work. Yeah. And what is it
that you like about gardening? I grow a lot of vegetables
I love to grow vegetables I think it's the nurturing it's
every moment of it and it's it's it's the change that you
see I suppose with red vegetables you see it quite
quickly you can eat them at the end. Are you a cook? I'm not a
brilliant cook but I tell you I love to cook what I
grow we we all grow it at home and my kids now have got
involved with it as well and my son grows his chillis and he
makes these hot chilli sauces so it's become a real sort of
family thing and and you know something I love to do for
my family I suppose and but for myself once I'm in my
vegetable garden I just forget forget the time you know and
they say to me 'mum, where have you been all day?' and
then I realised it's kind of seven o'clock in the evening
and it's on a Sunday and I've been out there since 9 o'clock
in the morning. I mean I've been a member of the RHS since I
think it's 1994 actually and I I had a my first job my in
London I had a little flat in Brixton, tiny north-facing
garden, knew I wanted to do something with it, didn't
really know what I wanted to do, went out to Wisley, fell in
love with kind of RHS Wisley, and then joined, and kind of
just been a member ever since. So it's been a continuing
thread for your working life. Now it's going to become to the
fore of your working life. Yes. What what do you want to
achieve with that? Because presumably taking on a job like
this, which is a big one and this is a challenge. You can't do
everything. What are you going to focus on? So I'm I
mean I think I'm taking on an organisation that has just had
a, you know, enormous sort of growth and success over the
last few years. So last 10 years you know new gardens you
know education programs and I think it's really then taking
that sort of wonderful sort of foundations of this incredible
organisation and then how can we just take it out to more and
more people. Young people. I've always had a particular passion
about young people. Young people today facing problems
around mental health. We know - I know through my own children
and their friends - that the toll that sort of COVID has taken on
but actually the kind of the issues of the planet. I love
nature. I worry about our planet and actually gardening
because people can be active, can do things is where all of
these things can come together and you know, it can be
beautiful, it can be inspiring can be uplifting so there's
something for everyone in gardening whether you love
delphiniums or whether you want to grow flowers that attract
the pollinators because you're worried about the bees it's
actually it's such a wide space. Something for everyone and
somewhere actually it's a connector. It is actually
one of the few things that can connect anyone and everyone.
The RHS you know it's been accused of being very white
very middle class very middle aged. Do you think that's fair?
We've got to open it up for everybody. I mean, you know,
and I... it's a challenge, it's an opportunity but I
think it's more of an opportunity. You know, people
who love gardening, you love gardening, I love gardening.
What we want to do is actually we want everybody to love
gardening, don't we? So, and it is a thing you can share and
you can share in so many ways. You know, you can share seeds.
You can share plants. You can share. Yeah. Expertise. So, it
is it's such an easy thing to share and you know, in the RHS
I think you can be at the forefront of that. Ultimately
horticultural expertise is what the RHS is known for and we
must maintain that but we must also make sure that we give so
many people the opportunity to be part of that horticulture
family and I think that's what we can do. We've got gardens
across the country. We've got community gardens, we've got
volunteers, we've got members, and the world's our oyster.
What I really want to do over the next few months is go out,
talk to people, meet people, talk to other members, talk to all the
wonderful kind of colleagues across the RHS, talk to our
council members. Here are so many people who've got
connections and just listen. Actually, I want to do some
listening. Find out what other people have to say. Thank you
very much indeed and thanks for chatting.