The Contributive Society’s founder Felix Appelbe founded the Adam Greathead award for inspiring young horticulturists.

A scholarship award providing for an exciting, rising talent of horticulture the fundamental principles of good gardening practice within the teams of Great Dixter and Ashwood.

A little foreword from John at Ashwood Nurseries about the award:

Adam Greathead was my good friend and head gardener who died five years ago in his sleep aged twenty-seven. He was an excellent gardener, who loved colour and exciting plant combinations, a young Christopher Lloyd. At the age of 23 Adam was the head of his local gardening group, he was a natural with people of all ages and had a unique cheeky charm.
A few weeks after Adam had died, I was giving a talk at the Chelsea Physic Garden. I was struggling to get going, suddenly the fire alarm went off and we had to evacuate the building. This break seemed to calm me down and on returning to the room I resumed the talk, and all went well. Unknown to me a gentleman in the audience Felix Appelbe was moved by my words about Adam and said he would like to create a fund for the Adam Greathead Award so that Great Britain could have another great horticulturist. Thank you Felix for sowing the seed for this award, sorry it has taken me so long to bring it to fruition.
I am delighted to announce that we have just awarded the first Adam Greathead Award to Matthew Padbury.

Pictured: John & Matthew.
Matthew displayed considerable plant knowledge in our identification test and considerable enthusiasm for horticulture in general.

Matthew will be spending twelve months working and learning in two of Britain’s much-loved gardens.
His first six months will be in John’s Garden at Ashwood in the West Midlands.
Here Matthew will be working along with Nigel Hopes and his team.
The aim of the award is to teach good gardening practices and a love of plants. It will include planting, maintenance of shrubs, trees, conifers, herbaceous and alpines, propagation, creating and maintaining plant displays, plant association and transparency pruning.

Matthew will also spend time up in the nursery to observe and help in the production of some of Ashwood’s speciality crops including cyclamen, lewisias, hepaticas and hellebores.

The second six months will be spent at Great Dixter, Northiam, Rye in East Sussex working with Fergus Garrett.
At Dixter he will work alongside the team on multi-layered mixed borders getting hands-on experience in Great Dixter’s unique way of layering a long-seasoned border.
Matthew will be immersed in life at Great Dixter, looking at meadow management, the putting together of a sub-tropical garden, pushing and pulling work to be reactive to the weather and be more efficient, as well as understanding the complex production of plants to feed the garden.
Matthew will get an understanding how a garden like Dixter is managed and will be part of an intense learning programme undertaken by the scholars and students at Great Dixter. Matthew will also take part in the push for greater biodiversity at Great Dixter.
The garden and estate currently ranks the 25th most biodiverse place in the UK and Matthew will get an insight into why that is.
Fergus and I believe that this is a unique opportunity for a young horticulturist to learn the principles of good gardening practice and enjoy being part of the gardening teams of Great Dixter and Ashwood.
If you would like to donate to help sponsor this award please contact Philip Baulk, who is the chair of the Ashwood Charitable Trust philip@ashwoodcharitabletrust.org.uk or myself info@ashwoodnurseries.com.
It would be wonderful if we could offer this award annually so that Great Britain can have many more great horticulturists.
Yours John