Course Tutor:  Anna Ribo

Please note that this event will be recorded and will be made available to delegates after the event. For more information on recording and privacy please click here. Once you have booked onto the event an invitation register to the Zoom meeting will be sent via email, including information on how to join the meeting.

Making your Garden Live Longer.  A year of garden tasks for better maintenance plans.

This course aims at inspiring participants who may not have worked professionally as gardeners to get a greater understanding of what goes on behind the scenes, allowing them to plan better and get greater insight into creating maintenance plans and communicating these to gardeners on their projects.

Drawing on her experience as ex-head gardener at Long Barn (Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson's first English garden) and as a planting designer, Anna will take you through a year in the garden from a gardener's point of view. There is a rhythm to the garden year and understanding this should hopefully make planning easier. We will look at what goes on through a full calendar year, from the dormant season through the rapid growth of spring, the summer bonanza and the slow down of autumn. Tasks discussed will include assessment of borders and divisions, staking, weeding, soil improvements, ordering of bulbs, cutting of meadows, planting out annuals and tender plants, summer cut backs, managing self-seeders, some basic pruning techniques and the importance of forward planning.

Through the course, we will discuss a range of plants and there will be time for questions.

Anna Ribo is a planting designer, garden advisor and planting and sketching teacher. After working as head gardener at the gardens at Long Barn she now focuses on planting design for her own and other professionals' projects. She also teaches garden design sketching 1-1 and in groups. Her work is unashamedly plant based.