Gardening talent Introducing Natalie Chivers, curator at Treborth Botanic Garden in Wales

She’s passionate about planting and a champion for thriftiness but Natalie, who’s currently curator at Treborth Botanic Garden, laments the loss of botany courses from our universities

Earliest garden memory Our family home in Devon: the garden was an expanse of knee-high grass with two gnarly apple trees, a mass of scrubby forsythias and a row of oaks that towered over the end of the garden shed. My sisters and I would bound through the grass with our dog, collecting acorns and making nests for slow worms. Who has inspired your career the most? My grandma Olive is a dedicated gardener. When I used to visit her in Birmingham, where she lived for 44 years, it was her thriftiness that fascinated me the most. She saved every bulb, every seed and we would see it again the next year in a different bed, pot or hanging basket. Horticultural heroes I first met Adam Frost when I was training with the Royal Horticultural Society and working at the Chelsea Flower Show. Adam welcomed me into his team, watched me graduate from the RHS and employed me a year later to build another garden at Chelsea. Adam’s grass-roots attitude to gardening is very refreshing and experiencing his determination and passion for plants is addictive. Favourite garden Holehird Garden in Cumbria. This hillside garden overlooks Windermere and is managed by the Lakeland Horticultural Society, a volunteer group that has created a stunning variety of garden experiences. Biggest challenge facing gardeners today The loss of botany in the UK. There are no botany degrees offered in UK universities now, and plant science is lacking in schools’ curricula. Where is the next generation of plant taxonomists who will name our plants going to come from? Or the field botanists who will be able to identify global flora? Botany and horticulture go hand in hand. What is the hardest gardening related thing you’ve ever had to do? Double digging my RHS allotment for my Certificate in Practical Horticulture. I sat in the last empty segment and cried. But it was worth the pain! Favourite gardening books Gardening in Pyjamas: Horticultural Enlightenment for Obsessive Dawn Raiders by Helen Yemm and The Kew Plant Glossary: An Illustrated Dictionary of Plant Terms by Henk Beentje. Contact n.j.chivers@bangor.ac.uk Treborth Botanic Garden website – treborth.bangor.ac.uk