CAFRE trained landscaper gets golden experience at Chelsea Flower Show.
CAFRE Foundation Degree student in Horticulture, Reece McKay, from Dromara, enthusiastically volunteered to help build The Gold Medal winning ‘Welcome to Yorkshire Garden’ at RHS Chelsea 2019.
Reece runs his own horticulture company, ‘Grandson Gardening and Landscaping’ which specialises in landscape/garden design and grounds maintenance.
After a lot of hard training at Greenmount, Reece has excelled in his field achieving a bronze Medal in the UK Landscaping Skills final in November
2018.
Hoping to develop his landscaping skills further he joined the hugely talented designer Mark Gregory of Landform Consultants to help build his 2019 Chelsea Garden. Reece worked on the garden build for 10 days. It was exhausting but greatly rewarding. He was over the moon when it was announced that the garden had secured a Gold medal.
Reece said: “This has been a fantastic experience for me. It’s been very hard work but a hugely worthwhile and invaluable experience to work with professionals at the top of their game. I have learned so much from Mark and his team but the Chelsea Gold Medal is a real bonus.”
Reese will shortly graduate from his horticulture course at CAFRE but his sights are now firmly set on even greater things than Chelsea Gold. He hopes to gain a place on the UK Landscape Gardening Team who will compete in Shanghai, China in 2021 at the WorldSkills competition.
And a WorldSkills gold might even trump Chelsea Gold! Not bad for a lad from Dromara.
