POSTPONED: Ask a Gardener – Expert-led Q&A

This event is postponed and a later date will be confirmed shortly.

Do you have burning question about a struggling plant in your garden? No idea where to start with growing your own veg or pruning that ginormous tree? Do your parsnips remain teensy or your roses floppy?

Here’s an exceptional chance to have your own gardening questions answered by not one but four of the Lake District’s top gardeners, in a frank and friendly interactive session. Karen Guthrie (Grizedale Arts’ Head Gardener) chairs experts from the best local public and private gardens with an extraordinary range of expertise from fruit and veg to arboriculture to tender perennials.

Aimed at gardeners of any level of experience, local or not, we can’t wait to help you grow your green fingers.

Ticket holders may submit questions by either:
Arriving at the venue by 6.10pm to put up to 2 questions in a hat.
Emailing up to two questions in advance to the chair to karen@grizedale.org

The panel will then select the ‘best’ to answer and the event runs from 6.45pm – 8pm, aiming for 15 questions or so, dipping back into the hat if we run out.

The Stable Bar will also be open for drinks at 5pm.

About the panel: 

Karen Guthrie is an artist and filmmaker, raised on the west coast of Scotland and a resident of the South Lakes for twenty years. Since 2009 she has been Warden & Head Gardener at Lawson Park, Grizedale Arts’ headquarters and residency base, a former hill farm above Coniston Water. Described by broadcaster Eric Robson as ‘a triumph’, the land now extends to around 4 acres including orchards, water gardens, no-dig vegetable beds, herbaceous borders, meadows, bespoke outbuildings and most things in between. Karen is especially interested in naturalistic low-maintenance herbaceous planting and in growing and preserving fruit and veg. Regularly working with volunteers at Lawson Park and at The Farmer’s Arms, she has a design role in this first garden redevelopment phase.  

Bethan Pettitt flitted between the arts and horticulture for some time before eventually settling on gardening, which had been her childhood passion. She trained with Bristol Botanic Garden and English Heritage before joining the National Trust to work on a proposed restoration of Fell Foot garden near Windermere. Her interests include garden history, native plants and apples. In early 2020 she was appointed Head Gardener at Ruskin’s former home, Brantwood, on the shores of Coniston Water and adjacent to Lawson Park, which neatly combines most of her interests.

Gillie Boyle grew up in Buckinghamshire and studied geography at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth before teaching secondary geography for 4 years.  After a year out to travel which included spending time working and volunteering on organic fruit and veg farms in Hawaii and Tasmania, Gillie returned to the UK and completed Royal Horticultural Society qualifications and a Diploma in Horticulture at Pershore College before getting a job with the National Trust at the acclaimed and influential Hidcote Manor Garden in Gloucestershire. In 2019 Gillie moved to Windermere as Head Gardener on the historic Yews estate. When not gardening Gillie plays netball, hikes, swims, and paddle boards.

Grace Holland grew up down the road in Ulverston feels very lucky to have had The Lakes as her childhood stomping ground. After uni in Sheffield, studying Film and English Literature, she returned to Cumbria where she trained to be a youth worker and worked as an outdoor instructor. An epiphany moment whilst apple picking in an abandoned walled garden led her to realise she wanted to work outside, but with plants rather than people! She enrolled on a year long, organic food growing course at a nearby market garden, through which she met Gary Primrose, a wonderful local gardener and began an informal traineeship working alongside him in various notable Lakeland gardens. At the same time, Grace was a founding member of The Coppice Co-op, a worker’s cooperative based near Silverdale, that restores neglected, previously coppiced woodlands in the area. 12 years later, Grace now works part time for Grizedale Arts at Lawson Park and The Farmer’s Arms, as well as managing the gardens at Blackwell House for Lakeland Arts. She lives just north of Kendal with her partner, their two small children and an old dog.