Chelsea 2014 Gold Medalist, YoungHort Director & YouTuber

@jackshilley

I had the opportunity to interview Jack Shilley, a man of many talents and tricks, who has achieved so much at such a young age.

Read his interview below:

1. What age did you start gardening?

I started gardening at the age of 6 years old – this is when my parents bought me first tiny popup greenhouse to start growing a few things.

2. Why did you decide to get into gardening?

Whilst gardening had been a hobby of mine for a long time the real turning point for me to choose horticulture as a career was after having a show garden at RHS Chelsea in 2009 with my school. This was such an incurable experience, it introduced me to new areas of horticulture and I met so many encouraging faces and contacts there – It really was a must do career!

3. Can you please explain what YoungHort is?

YoungHort is an organisation run by myself, two associate directors, Jamie Butterworth & Fiona Willetts and a team of 15 ambassadors, that I created using social media (after being urged to do so by Christine Walkden!) that aims to do 3 main things;

– Promote the industry to you people (mainly secondary school age 12/13 to 25)

– Host events to enable young horticulturists to network with each other and industry leaders to help build a better industry for the future (we have had 2 conferences already!)

– Put young horticulturists in the spot light to show off young talent and promote it to other young people.

4. What made you start up YoungHort?

I started up YoungHort because I felt that the young talent within the horticultural industry are not promoted enough. There were few events for young horticulturists and no real way that we could all connect – this is what spurred me on to tweet about how I felt there should be a conference for young people of the industry, I was then urged to do so by a number of people and now YoungHort seems to be flying and is already bigger than I ever thought that it would be!

5. What are your biggest achievements so far?

My greatest achievements so far – This is a tricky one! I love what I do, horticulture is so amazing but if I had to pick a few things they would be:

– Winning an RHS Silver Medal with my secondary school in 2009, this was my career turning point as it was such an amazing thing to be a part of.

– Achieving a Distinction Star grade when I graduated from Sparsholt in July 2014. I had worked so hard for two years and to achieve this grade was an incredible feeling to have!

• Winning Gold and Best in category with my mates at college for our 2014 RHS Chelsea Flower show garden. You can?t ask for much better than that, Sparsholt College has always produced show gardens at Chelsea for their diploma students but to actually be the team that pulled of this feat was incredible! A great team experience too!
• Starting up YoungHort and seeing that we are genuinely making a difference to the industry that we are all in and love.

6. What are you most proud of?

I?m proud of all my experiences and I am both very lucky and privileged to have had so much success and opportunities at my age. I am probably most proud of how successful YoungHort has become – to see your idea actually being followed up, experienced by other people and being recognised for it is one of the greatest feelings in the world and I can?t thank my team and supporters for helping me with YoungHort!

7. What did you enter into Chelsea 2014?

The 2014 Sparsholt College Diploma Students along with the college lectures and other supporters (Huhtamaki Paper Cups) entered a group garden design which showed the process of paper cup production to help Huhtamaki (main garden sponsor) re-launch and re-brand their biodegradable paper cups. The garden featured five sections each depicting a section in the production process from the nursery to the mill to composting to re-use. It was an incredible garden to work on!

8. How did it feel being the winner?

It was one of the best feelings in the world! And I’m sure all of my team mates who worked on the garden would agree! I can?t quite explain the feeling but there was also a huge feeling of relief that we had done it, a whole years? worth of work recognised – just amazing!

9. What is NTBG and how did you get an internship? Tell me more about why you?re in Hawaii?

NTBG stands for ?National Tropical Botanical Garden? and is a large organisation based in Kauai, Hawaii in the USA. They are an organisation dedicated to educating the public about the importance of plants and biodiversity as well as conservation and preservation efforts of rare and endangered plants across the world. It was just on the off chance that I applied for an internship there – my college lecturer had mentioned about the botanic gardens over there – and I just applied and got accepted! The rest as they say is history!

I really wanted to go to Hawaii or any tropical place for that matter to broaden my knowledge of tropical horticulture – something I feel really passionately about and it was very much worth doing! A really great experience I will remember for the rest of my life!

10. Lastly, what are your future plans?

My future plans, well, at the moment I am looking at universities and degree programs to further extend my knowledge of horticulture and ultimately will be hoping to work in either retail, journalism or broadcasting within horticulture.