"I knew I wanted to spend my life working with plants since my 4th birthday when I was given a present of a propagator, packet of seeds and a watering can - watching those first seeds germinate was absolutely captivating.  Even now, I still get that tingle of excitement every time I plant a seed and watch it germinate and flourish into a new plant.

During my youth I spent school holidays and weekends working for the local nurseryman, doing everything from collecting trolleys, re-stocking the beds and helping out the local farmers at harvest time.

I decided to train in Horticulture at Pershore College and worked in a number of areas including research and marketing with a leading wholesale nursery.  I then trained further at Cheltenham University where I studied Landscape Architecture and took a placement at a practice working on public scheme across the country.

I then went back to education a third time, this time on the otherside, as I was approaced by Pershore College to lecture in horticulture and design courses.  It was whilst I was lecturing that I was asked to contribute to a number of television programmes inlcuding House Call, Gardening Neighbours and Weekend Gardener.  I then left full time lecturing to concentrate on TV work fronting or co-hosting programmes such as The Flying Gardener, Hidden Gardens, Gardeners' World, Great Garden Detectives and Country Lives. 

I now run my own practice and split my work amongst designing, lecturing, broadcasting, writing and campaigning.  I will, however, always remain a gardener at heart."

Hello from Frances
Hi, I am Chris’s partner and together we have three gorgeous girls who effervesce with an energy and enthusiasm for life - and for being in the garden! - which give us reason to smile everyday!  In addition to raising these lovely girls, I have been working with Chris for the last seven years running the day to day activities of the office and all of our projects, including our design schemes, our talks and lecture programmes and our ‘baby’ the Chris Beardshaw Mentoring Scholarship, of which we are both immensely proud.

My previous career was actually in natural foods which again, was a family business.  My father began growing organic produce way before it hit the mainstream and used to travel up to London to sell his organic cauliflowers and cabbages over 37 years ago!  He moved to London and his business developed and when I began working with him we packaged and sold macrobiotic foods and in 1993 we introduced the non diary milk alternative, Rice Dream, to the European market.

  
I feel there is a lot of synergy between my previous work and what I now do with Chris and feel very proud to be part of the horticultural industry.  I believe horticulture touches every aspect of life and is therefore integral to everything we do.  There has never been a more important time to be connected to our plants, to recognise their value in our lives and to know that we can learn and do so much more with them in a sustainable way and it’s for this reason that I love my work so much!  In fact it’s not work it’s a way of life…….

I am going to be letting you know more about how our scholarship develops so please look out for details of this on our scholarship pages.