Sowing the seeds

Hello! I'm Sam.

I'm a 33-year old communications officer from Suffolk in the UK, and I'm changing career into horticulture.

I'm about to enrol on an RHS Level 2 Certificate in Horticulture at either Suffolk New College (Otley) or Capel Manor College (Enfield). Having worked mostly in offices for thirteen years, albeit with outdoorsy side gigs for most of that, this is a major and exciting change. 

If you've found this blog, chances are you're thinking about a similar switch yourself. Like most people, when considering big life decisions, I turned to Google, and found quite a few articles and blog pieces from other career changers moving into horticulture. I scrolled through some Reddit forums, read the RHS magazine and spoke to friends of friends who work in the sector. It seems like there are lots of us coming into hort from backgrounds as diverse as marketing, welding and teaching. And the usual first step, it seems, is the RHS Level 2 Certificate accompanied by volunteering to gain practical experience.

What I haven't found is the consistent story of someone making the change. I wanted to read, not just that someone had done it, but how - what is the course like? How does it feel to make the switch? How best to cultivate a career? I hope this blog will provide, not answers, but a perspective for you amongst many others that will help you to make your own decisions. 

Why I'm changing career into horticulture

Going from office work to gardening is a significant change. Why? And why didn't I just do that from the outset?

As a kid, I was always fairly academic, especially in wordy areas like English and history. I also LOVED being outside and playing in gardens. The latter was pretty normal for a kid, particularly in the 90s when we were left to roam more than children are now. so 'academic' was the thing that adults noticed and commented on.

Entering my teens, I became less active. In fact, I began to have less energy than my peers and preferred staying indoors. An office job seemed my destination. I went to uni to study English Lit, which I loved but wasn't sure what to do with, and when I graduated I got an internship which led me into communications and media. I climbed the ladder, from team assistant to press officer to senior manager, met some wonderful people, and wrote about all sorts of topics from city planning to space research.

The thing was, during this journey I also discovered that I had an autoimmune condition which had been causing my teenage tiredness. As soon as I got on medication, my energy came back. It turned out I wasn't low-energy, or particularly indoorsy, after all. I had, in fact, been quietly and mildly ill for a long time, and that had been sapping my energy levels. Once it was addressed, I began to find 40 hours per week sitting on my bum, staring at screens, quite stifling. 

By that point, though, I had rent to pay. I earned enough to pay the bills, not enough to risk a career change. I stayed in the office job, but became very active in my free time - swimming, paddleboarding, archery, hiking, running - and worked at my husband's activity centre business for free at weekends, coaching archery and axe throwing, mowing and caring for five acres of grass and woodland, and helping him to create a gorgeous environment for customers. For the day job, I worked in roles that although essentially desk-based, also involved plenty of offsite meetings, going out to take photos or film videos, and interviewing people on the street.

The tipping point

Then came 2020. Lockdown. My previously semi-active career path became home-based, remote and very much focused on the screen. Suddenly, going out and taking photos, or coaching archery in the woods, was illegal. Working in a comms role in the public sector meant workloads and required hours went up just as work became something that was "always on". Microsoft Teams told everyone you were "away" if you didn't type or click for more than five minutes, and that implied a judgement (real or imagined). This movement towards isolation and sedentary work never really went away, and although it evened the playing field a little for many with disabilities or busy home lives to juggle with work, for me it removed the aspects of the job that I enjoyed. 

After the last lockdown, I bought a house and for the first time, had a little garden of my own. Not a rental that I wasn't allowed to change, but a new-build patch of blank turfed canvas. Somewhere between mowing a two-acre range at the activity centre and picking soil from my nails after hunting for new potatoes in my first raised bed, I became hooked on gardening. This was the outdoors I had known as a kid. Something that could be played with. That wasn't just to look at: that you could touch, shape, be part of. I loved the hard work of digging new beds in the clay-and-rubble new-build soil, the rain and mist and hot sun. This, I thought, is what humans should be doing. I delved into gardening books and podcasts about sustainability, learning everything I could.

Crunch point came this summer. My team had new management and was going through a period of change. Work was in a stressful patch, and although that was nothing new, this time I couldn't find the drive to keep pushing forward a career I was no longer enjoying. I was putting on weight and developing RSIs working long desk hours and stress-scoffing cake, worrying about work dramas in my free time, and it didn't seem like a different job in the same career path was the answer.

The first steps

One night, I found myself googling gardening careers. It's hard work, said the internet: the pay is low, the work is hard, the weather is often inclement. But I kept thinking about it, more and more, and eventually, after a particularly long and office-drama-filled day, a switch flicked in my brain: Now. I handed in my three-month notice, feeling like I was doing something that was both reckless and necessary, and started planning. 

So, here I am. Deciding which college to study the RHS Level 2 at; planning next steps afterwards; and looking for part-time work alongside my studies. Maybe it'll work out, maybe not, but trying seems the most important thing. I'll keep blogging, and I hope it helps someone else taking similar steps.

Read next: Choosing my growing medium: which college to study at?