Public Places
I’ve been here a year and a half and there’s so much going on that I haven’t had the opportunity to look back
” I
felt like I had won the weather lottery as I drove past what seemed like hundreds of cars parked outside Bodnant Garden. It was a gloriously sunny day, sandwiched between the other wetter
and colder days that week, and how great it was to be able to conduct an interview outside in the warmth. Now, I have read about Bodnant and the
admiration it receives from National Trust members and horticultural enthusiasts, but I wasn’t prepared to actually have my breath taken away by the sheer variety and splendour of the different areas that make up the garden. I have since recommended it to anyone who will listen. Head Gardener, John Rippin, started out
“as most people do” attending a local horticultural college. After studying at Moulton College for a year, John did a year in Israel to get practical experience and then started working his way up: “I started in small gardens and then private estates and managed to get into Sir Harold Hillier Gardens near Winchester, which is a great arboretum and public garden.” From there, he became Head Gardener at
the historic Heale House near Salisbury. “I was there for five years. It’s a traditional, archetypal English country garden, so a bit of
everything.” He then went to Hidcote Manor in Gloucestershire as the Deputy Head Gardener, looking after the Red Borders and the Old Garden. “There was quite a big team to sort out, which was great,” John tells me. “Then I became Head Gardener at Castle
Drogo on the edge of Dartmoor, which was a challenge! It was an opportunity to try and revive a garden which no one seemed to really rate but had huge potential. It was an Edward Lutyens design to a fantastic layout but, in recent history, didn’t really have the resources put into it. So it was great to be able to get it from a garden that wasn’t appreciated to one that was visited and held in more esteem in the gardening world.” When the Bodnant job came up, John said
it was the chance of a lifetime. “I’ve been here a year and a half and there’s so much going on that I haven’t had the opportunity to look back.” We met up with Mark Morris, who has been gardening at Bodnant for thirty-one years and is a fount of knowledge. “I left school and did the YTS course in horticulture in UCNW in Bangor and struggled, at the time, for work. I worked a short while at a golf course and then I got a fortuitous phone call from one of my old teachers about a job at Bodnant. Through them putting effort in
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