Winners of the Colegrave Seabrook Foundations, Smart Garden Products Student Scholarship have taken part in a two day Development Tour of horticultural businesses around the Spalding and Peterborough areas.
The tour culminated in a visit to Smart Garden Products Eureka building in Peterborough. The students, Abi Green (Pershore College), Ben Sayers (CAFRE), Rebecca Gilroy (CAFRE), Alfie Smith (Eden Project) and Naomi Hughes (CAFRE), were accompanied by three trustees from The Colegrave Seabrook Foundation and joined by two young colleagues, one from Gilroy Landscapes in Northern Ireland and another working at Kerley & Co, plant breeders, based in Cambridgeshire.
The scholarship winners had been invited to visit Smart Garden Products as part of their scholarship award and trustees felt that it would be of added value to the students to visit some other businesses while in the area. Baytree Garden Centre, Bridge Farm Group, Springfield Festival Gardens, Taylors Bulbs and of course Smart Garden Products, all hosted the group for a tour of their facilities and gave the students a great insight into their various businesses.
The broad variety of businesses involved in the tour really opened the students’ eyes to the huge number of opportunities available to them and reinforced in their minds that they had undoubtedly chosen the right career! At all the venues we visited the owners and senior managers themselves took time to meet all the students and chat to them about the history of their respective businesses, show them around the facilities and discuss future plans. There were plenty of questions and discussions as the tours took place and everyone agreed that this had been a fabulous two days, spent getting to know fellow scholarship winners and trustees, as well as gaining a massive amount of knowledge and insight into how these very different businesses operated.
The new season for applications from students for scholarships in 2024 is now open. There are still opportunities for horticultural businesses to support the work of the Foundation and further information on both can be found on the Foundation website: www.colegraveseabrookfoundation.org.uk
