Our speaker for the evening of April 15th is Michael Hickson, former Head Gardener of Knightshayes, County Devon, England—surely one of England’s great gardens, at least since the arrival of Michael Hickson. Not surprisingly, his lecture title is ‘The Gardens at Knightshayes’.
Michael writes that ‘since a child I have been interested [as had been his father] in wildlife and plants’. He ‘studied gardening at Dartington Hall, followed by landscape design and commercial training before joining Sir John and Lady Heathcoat Amory at Knightshayes in 1963’. At Knightshayes he had, he says, ‘a wonderful time developing that garden from 12 acres into a 50 acre garden before I retired. . . . During that time’ he continues, he ‘chaired the steering committee of the then newly formed Devon Garden Trust, and helped develop the Devon Group of the National Council for the Conservation of Plants and Gardens’. He is currently, in his retirement, Vice President of both organisations, as well as a member of several committees of the RHS, especially those having to do with woody plants. More unusually, he is currently the ‘Chair the Windlesham Committee, a group of people who visit prisons in England and Wales encouraging the development of gardens within HM Prisons’. Surely this project must have some kind of civilizing effect on the inmates who participate in it. He is a ‘Judge at numerous RHS flower shows and at similar events in Belgium and France’. [Perhaps if we can influence his travel plans while he is in our vicinity, we can get him to judge our show on May 1st!] Clearly a busy man in retirement, Michael also works ‘as a Gardens Consultant to a number of large estates, which’, he says, ‘keeps me from being under [his wife] Lena's feet. We both have a lot of enjoyment out of our two acre garden which is set in rolling countryside above the river Exe’.
