Malcolm Pharaoh, Head Gardener at Marwood Hill Gardens in County Devon, England, and our speaker for the evening of April 21st, began his horticultural work pretty much at the ground level—sorry about that! After he left school he ‘worked at the local parks for three years doing day release at the local horticultural college’. Then went back to school, to a horticultural college in Scotland for two years, and then spent two years at Wisley (the R.H.S. garden in Surrey) doing the Diploma course.
His career from this point was pretty direct. He came to work at Marwood Hill gardens in 1972, and has been there ever since. Marwood Hillis ‘a 20 acre garden with a wide range of plants including a good collection of Rhododendrons’, both species and hybrids I believe.
Malcolm has been an R.H.S. judge for 14 years, judging Camellias at the London shows, and has been on the R.H.S. Rhododendron and Camellia Committee for 12 years. He hasalso judged Camellias and Rhododendrons at several other shows including the Cornwall Garden Society show. So perhaps in his talk we’ll see some camellias as well as rhododendrons, since, like most gardeners interested in rhododendrons, he has an interest in the Camellia genus as well.
