September has arrived and for many Horticulture businesses it’s the start of a new year after the summer holidays. Coronavirus is impacting life again but ‘horticulture life’ is getting back to some sort of normality. Video conferencing is now fully embedded in our daily lives, webinars compete for our attention and we are all just getting used to putting our hand up to ask a question and performing the mute and unmute video conference communication dance. Our webinars are proving particularly popular and we will extend these through to spring 2021, so please do send your professional topic suggestions through to Jason Daff secretary@horticulture.org.uk. To complement our webinars we will be having a big winter Hort Quiz organised by the Chairman of our South East Branch, Mr John Brannan katohirvi@gmail.com. This Quiz will cover the full compendium of Horticulture and will test the very best horticulture book worms. This will take place in early December and there will be prizes galore!
Squeezed in amongst all this educational activity will be our AGM on Thursday the 24th of September. We have a splendid ‘James Bruce’ lecture from Dave Goulson, Professor of Biology at the University of Sussex, and I am sure this will be a must view session. The AGM also addresses our Chartership programme and we will acknowledge the position of Retired Chartered members with the designation of CHort Rtd.
The member database and website continues to be developed and we hope that all of our Council and Committee activities will be listed with minutes for member review by December.
The Grow Careers landing page on our web site is also due a long overdue upgrade and I am very pleased that Trustee and Scotland branch member George Gilchrist has agreed to co-ordinate this task. The Grow Careers web site will continue to represent all of Horticulture activity and will not be restricted to Ornamental Horticulture. George has master minded a wonderful annual grow careers day initiative in Scotland for many years and it is our ambition to repeat this initiative in England in 2021. With support from NFU and AHDB we can really illustrate the best employment opportunities in Professional Horticulture.
In August, we had our third quarter Branch Chairs meeting and my immense thanks to all who attended. This was a hugely informative session and I appreciate the effort made by branch chairs to improve our offering and general output. This is what makes CIHort the engaging Institute that it is !
I was also delighted to chair the inaugural Past Presidents meeting recently and can report that this was a most positive and progressive meeting with 25 years of Past Presidents joining the meeting. This group has a wealth of knowledge and provided erudite commentary on matters past, current and future. The Past Presidents will be a force for good in institute matters and I look forward to working with them. One immediate task they have, is to update the CIHort Award to 50 respected Horticulturists. Bill Simpson is leading on this project. The Past Presidents will meet on a biannual basis.
We also had a Council meeting at the end of July and my warmest welcome to new Trustees Angela Clarke, Philip Pearson and James Simpson. Delighted to have your insights and wise words brought to Council.
I look forward to seeing you all, on video conference, at our AGM.
Gerald Bonner CHort, FCIHort
PRESIDENT
president@horticulture.org.uk