Date – 15 October 2024
Time – 9:30 am - 5:00 pm
40 Years of Uniting a Growing Profession
In 2024 The Chartered Institute of Horticulture will celebrate its 40th anniversary.
To start the celebration, the CIH will host a conference ‘Horticultural Solutions for the Planet’ at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew to spotlight the many and varied contributions of horticulture and its solutions towards a healthy and sustainable planet. We are inviting speakers from a broad spectrum of the industry to highlight their various sectors and future developments.
Save the Date: Tuesday 15th October 2024, RBG Kew, London. Conference delegates also receive complimentary entry to the Gardens for Monday 14th & Wednesday 16th October 2024.
This inclusive event will bring together the best and most inspiring practitioners to share solutions, insights and innovations where horticulture is driving positive change.
The conference will feature talks from industry experts and early-career horticulturists. Horticulture, the original ‘Green Career’ has the solutions to many of the greatest challenges facing humanity. Join us, for an inspirational day that we hope will increase the recognition, visibility and the importance of our profession in rising to these challenges.
In coordination with our Media Partner – HortWeek
HortWeek has been serving and supporting the horticulture industry since 1841. A subscription to HortWeek provides you with timely, expert news, data and intelligence on new business opportunities, risk avoidance, best practice approaches and cost-effective purchasing decisions.
With HortWeek you can grow and protect your business with full industry coverage and access the indispensable resource for the best business-critical information across all horticulture sectors helping you secure success and sustainability for your businesses and estates.
As part of your Horticultural Solutions for the Planet 2024 registration, you can receive a FREE no obligation 2 month trial to HortWeek. HortWeek has been serving and supporting the horticulture industry for 180 years and a free trial provides you with unlimited access to all exclusive HortWeek content, news, industry ranking tables, expert analysis, podcasts and more.
MEET THE SPEAKERS
David Domoney
C.Hort. FCI Hort. F Wcg. F Cmc. FLS
David is a Fellow of the London Colleges of Horticulture at Capel Manor, Fellow of the Warwickshire Colleges Group, Fellow of the Linnean Society, and a Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Horticulture. David was selected by HRH The Duke of Edinburgh Prince Edward to receive the 2018 Award for Excellence in Horticulture Career Development.
David promotes human interaction with plants and nature in a world becoming more distracted by digital engagement. He is the mastermind behind Britain’s longest running community gardening campaign Cultivation Street, promoting Community Gardens and Gardening for Health. David is the Ambassador for the Chartered Institute of Horticulture, Patron of Pollinating London Together, Patron of The British Hedgehog Preservation Society, Patron for Greenfingers, a charity which builds gardens in children’s hospices, and Patron of Air Ambulances UK. David is also an Ambassador for the RSPB and Ambassador for the Therapeutic Horticulture charity Thrive.
He is a national garden and nature television presenter on shows including ITV’s ‘Love Your Garden’, and the Sunday Morning show ‘Love Your Weekend’. David also presents on ITV’s Gardening Club and serves as the resident garden presenter on ITV’s flagship show ‘This Morning’. David‘s personal social media combined following is over a million. He also utilises national shows to promote engagement with nature, and to date has been awarded 34 Royal Horticultural Society medals, including RHS Chelsea Flower Show Gold medals and Best in Show Trophies, for his gardens, floral displays, and scientific exhibits.
Prof. Michael Hardman
Prof. Mike Hardman is Chair in Urban Sustainability at the University of Salford in England. He is an interdisciplinary researcher interested primarily in cities and has published widely on topics from guerrilla gardening to urban agriculture and green infrastructure. His work is global in nature, with projects in the likes of Africa, North America, Europe and elsewhere, focussing on themes from the potential to upscale radical greening initiatives, to large-scale urban farming. Mike has obtained funding from charities, industrial partners and global bodies for this work, with recent projects funded by the likes of Horizon Europe. He also holds a number of senior editor roles, external advisory roles and regularly speaks in the media on urban sustainability. Such external roles include as a Trustee of Social Farms & Gardens, a national charity for gardening, growing and farming.
Prof. Simon Pearson
Simon has been responsible for founding and developing the Lincoln Institute of Agri Food Technology (LIAT), now recognised as “world leading” within the 2021 BEIS Innovation Strategy, Creating the Future. His group have helped pioneer the development of advanced robotic systems, machine learning, artificial intelligence and digital systems for UK agriculture. These systems are now entering the marketplace and in 2021, 12 Saga Thorvald robot systems co-developed with the Lincoln team, achieved the milestone of 10,000km of on-farm autonomy. In 2021, he co-chaired the DEFRA Automation and Robotics Review with former Secretary of State George Eustice.
Over the last 7 years, Simon’s group have leveraged over £73M of collaborative research and development funding to underpin an extensive range of agricultural technologies. This includes co-leadership of the EPSRC AgriForwards Centre for Doctoral Training cohort of 50 PhD’s, joint with the Universities of Cambridge and East Anglia – one of the largest global cohorts of agri-robotics PhD’s – bringing in new talent to the industry; key people who will help resolve complex challenges across agriculture. Prior to joining Lincoln, Simon was Director of a farming company producing cut flowers in Lincolnshire and Cornwall. He grew up in South Lincolnshire, where his family produced vegetable and cereal crops.
For his contribution to the sector, he was awarded the 2022 RASE Science and Technology Award.
Dr. Harry Langford
Harry has a PhD in Environmental Engineering and is a dynamic, interdisciplinary environmental scientist and Agri-Tech innovation expert, working within the Agri-Tech sector to advance crop productivity and food system sustainability. With a background in soil structure and function, he has expertise across soil health and sustainable agriculture, novel environmental sensing, and controlled environment agriculture. His career has spanned several Agri-Food system roles, including as a knowledge exchange and innovation manager within the N8 Agrifood Resilience Programme. His current role within the UK Agri-Tech Centre is to support and develop collaborative R&D, and exchange knowledge, across the agri-food supply chain to deliver sustainability impacts for the sector and wider economy. He leads several collaborative R&D projects in Controlled Environment Horticulture in particular, for the UK Agri-Tech Centre, aiming to improve the scalability and sustainability of CEA within the UK. He also leads on Open Innovation, working with sector stakeholders to develop realistic and robustly assessed solutions to critical sector challenges to drive sector growth and impact.
Ali Capper
Ali is in Partnership at Stocks Farm, Suckley, Worcestershire UK with her husband Richard and his father Mark, the Cappers’ specialise in growing hops and apples. They farm dessert & cider apples and hops.
Ali’s former 18-year career was in Advertising & Marketing.
Ali is a former Board member (2012-2024) of and Chairman (2016-2022) of the NFU’s national Horticulture & Potatoes Board and was a Trustee of Nuffield Farming Scholarship Trust (2014-2019). Ali was also a long standing Board member of British Hop Association and Wye Hops until 2024.
Today, in addition to numerous roles at the farm, her work includes membership of the Board of the Oxford Farming Conference. Ali is Executive Chairman of British Apples & Pears Ltd since 2018, Chairman of Horticulture Crop Protection Ltd, a Nuffield Scholar (2013) and a non-executive Director of NFU Mutual.
Prof. Alistair Griffiths
Alistair leads the RHS’s highly skilled team of scientists focused on assimilating, evaluating and sharing the most current scientific knowledge and undertaking scientific research to provide high-quality, evidence-based solutions to address horticultural challenges. Alistair is responsible for ensuring that the RHS charity remains at the forefront of horticulture science. Prior to the RHS he was a key player in using horticulture science to create the award-winning Eden Project, spending a decade there as Head Scientist.
Alistair is interested in how gardens, gardening and growing garden plants (indoors or out) can help towards improve the wellbeing of people, and is co-author of Your Wellbeing Garden: How to Make Your Garden Good for You – Science, Design, and Practice. His ambition is to build a more resilient gardening community who enjoy their gardens and who take positive action to benefit their gardening handprint on the planet and to maximise the health of our nation.
Helen Baxter
Food security and climate change are significant challenges for the future and ongoing research into precision horticulture and agriculture is critical. Helen is a PhD student and post-graduate researcher studying the effects of seaweed biostimulants on plant and crop growth. With degraded soils, increased drought and heat stress and the need to reduce and refine fertiliser inputs, developing sustainable solutions are critical areas for research. She is investigating changes in physiological plant mechanisms, tolerance to stress and changes in crop quality and nutrients following the use of seaweed biostimulants.
Helen originally qualified as a medical doctor and worked for many years as a Consultant Psychiatrist before deciding on a career change. She returned to university to study a BSc in Horticulture and during this degree rekindled her interest in biology and plant science. During the degree she was awarded the Boots Company Cup for being Top Student in her first two years. She completed the BSc(Hons) Horticulture with a First and was awarded the Wickstead Trophy as Top Student in BSc. During this Helen completed a dissertation looking at the use of seaweed biostimulants to protect against abiotic stress, such as drought, and received the Nottingham Trent University Dissertation Prize for the Top Dissertation in the School of Environmental Sciences.
Charles Shi
Charles is a Botanical Horticulturist at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, where he curates and manages the Wild Rose Collection.
His curiosities revolve around the analysis of plant collections through biochemistry, in research projects involving volatiles and scent.
Following working the Rhododendron Dell at Kew, and interest of woodland gardens, he partook in a plant collecting expedition to the montane forests of Northwest Vietnam.
Dr. Rhaghavendra Prasad
As a post-doctoral fellow at the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), Raghavendra leads the collaborative “Transition to Peat-Free” research project involving the RHS, industry partners, and DEFRA. In this role, he works closely with eight commercial nurseries collectively producing 143 million plants annually. Additionally, he collaborates with growing media manufacturers. Research focusses on peat-free growing media solutions that are economically and environmentally sustainable, whilst also being practically viable in professional settings.
Raghavendra’s horticultural journey began with an early curiosity about plants, which evolved into a deep passion for sustainable cultivation practices. Holding a Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree in Horticulture, he furthered his education by attending a course on “Sustainable Agricultural Solutions” in Israel. This experience fueled his interest in soilless growing methods, precision water management, and efficient fertiliser use.
Driven by curiosity, he pursued a Master of Science (MSc) in Horticulture, focusing specifically on soilless growing media. During his doctoral research, Raghavendra explored alternatives to peat by experimenting with materials from horticultural waste streams. Formulating peat-reduced and peat-free mixes using Spent Mushroom Substrates, he meticulously characterised their properties. Establishing plants in these innovative media compositions allowed him to study their relationship with the growing environment.
Pat Fitzgerald
Patrick FitzGerald has over 35 years of working experience in plant breeding, project collaboration and horticultural production. He is founder and CEO of three successful companies in the field of crop development and plant-based food innovation: Beotanics Ltd Ireland, FitzGerald Nurseries Ltd, Ireland and Nativaland Lda Portugal. He has, innovated, developed and introduced novel landscape and field crop plants to the European market, such as locally successful purple and orange sweet potato, yacon, oca, and wasab and bringing these crops to scale in collaborative agricultural production. The companies have received multiple awards, EU plant breeders rights grants and patents for my innovation and specialization in propagation. Beotanics Ltd furthermore has entered two European Horizon2020 projects with large scale grant fundings and multinational partners while also continuously funding its own private research.
Patrick is well known in the international horticulture industry in particular in his work in FitzGerald Nurseries ove 35 years as an innovator and for his constant work on bringing sweet potato to European farmers and as the earliest scaled innovator in European sweetpotato production. Patrick role in the Beotanics Group of companies is to drive collaboration with customers and partners across the horticultural food and ornamental supply chains and to create value-added products that meet the sustainability, nutritional and environmental needs of consumers. Patrick has a strong network of clients, breeders, and industry contacts, and is a passionate and visionary leader in the field of niche added value plant-based food innovation.
As a board member at Bord Bia – The Irish Food Board, Patrick FitzGerald contributes time to the promotion and strategic development of the Irish food and horticulture industry.
Simon Toomer
Simon Toomer has spent his working life as a forester, arboriculturist and botanist. He is Curator of Living Collections at Kew Gardens and was formerly Director of The National Arboretum, Westonbirt, and Senior National Consultant for Plant Conservation with the National Trust.
George Plumptre
George Plumptre has been Chief Executive of the National Garden Scheme since 2010. The National Garden Scheme gives visitors unique access to over 3,500 exceptional private gardens in England, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Channel Islands and raises impressive amounts of money for nursing and health charities through admissions, teas and cake. Since 2010 the charity has donated more than £37 million to its beneficiaries.
Prior to this he has had a long career as a gardens journalist and author including being Gardening Correspondent of The Times 1993-96 and an annual contributor to Country Life for 40 years. He is the author of a number of books on gardens. In 1999 he founded the internet gardening business Greenfingers.com.
Mark Tuson
A keen plants-person originating from the Isle of Man with a love of plants from a young age. Mark studied a National Diploma in Horticulture at Pershore College, returned to the Isle of Man to manage a small landscape design company focused on coastal gardens.
Having moved to Surrey in 2017 to take up the role as a Team Leader at Wisley Gardens, such projects including the redesign of The National collection of Heathers, an ornamental grass garden, and the new entrance Laboratory development. Alongside this Mark carried out the three year RHS MHort in 2019.
Mark now heads up the biodiversity team alongside his position at Wisley and has taken on other areas of responsibility within the garden, such as the heart of the garden, Oakwood. With a lifelong passion for plants Mark believes that Plants can be the solution for our planet, and hence his topic for the MHort.
Directions & Travel Information:
The conference will be held in the Lady Sainsbury Lecture Theatre in the Jodrell Building near Kew Road. Parking at Kew Gardens is very limited, we recommend delegates attend via public transport where possible.
If you are coming via London tube it is Kew Gardens tube station which is on the District line and Overground stop.
If you are coming via British Rail then the stop is Kew Bridge and it is a fifteen minute walk over Kew Bridge to the Jodrell Gate.
The nearest access for delegates is via Jodrell Gate (TW9 3DS). The nearest visitor car park is at Ferry Lane and the entrance is called Brentford Gate. This is a 15-minute walk to the Jodrell building. There are 3 disabled parking bays at Elizabeth Gate (TW9 3AE).
All attendees must arrive at the event via Jodrell Gate (TW9 3DS).
Further info:
Getting here | Kew – explains all of the parking options at Kew.
The conference is kindly sponsored by:
