The green-fingered workers with blooming good names

If you have a name like Daisy, Rose or Green, you’ve probably joked that you should opt for a career in gardening.

But it seems many do – with the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) discovering that around one in eight of its staff have names linked to plants and the garden.

The organisation has revealed that among its almost 900 staff are four Heathers, three Berrys and three people called Moss – not to mention communications officer fuchsia Wilkins. It also has a Shears, Marsh, Hill, Bird, Greenfield and Goodacre.

The curator of RHS Garden Wisley in Surrey is Matthew Pottage, who was preceded by Jim Gardiner. Meanwhile Heather Cutmore and Christopher Rose tend to RHS Garden Hyde Hall in Essex.

Overall, 108 out of 898 current RHS staff have names connected to nature, the outdoors or horticulture, research carried out for National Gardening Week – starting April 30 – found.

It is just the latest example of ‘nominative determinism’ – the theory that people are drawn to careers which fit their names.