This week – Apprentice Week Wales – the National Garden Scheme has announced additional funding for a second apprenticeship in Botanical Horticulture at the National Botanic Garden of Wales.
Commenting, Chief Executive of the National Garden Scheme, Dr Richard Claxton said: “We are delighted to be able to support a second apprentice at the National Botanic Garden of Wales (NBGW) this year, plugging a funding shortfall and continuing our support of horticultural apprenticeships who are vital to the success of many of the world’s great gardens.”
Head of Horticulture, Learning and Nature at the National Botanic Garden of Wales, Don Murray, adds: “The apprenticeship programme has been developed to address a critical skills gap in horticulture, while also widening access to the profession and supporting the National Garden Scheme’s long-standing commitment to education, stewardship, and the future of gardens. The additional funding from the National Garden Scheme means that we can now support a second apprentice this year, allowing us to scale the programme responsibly, creating peer learning, resilience, and continuity within the horticultural team.”
Current apprentice, Kate Cobley says: “The apprenticeship at the garden has breathed life into a new passion for me and I feel genuinely joyful at the thought of going to work every morning. It has given me all the skills and contacts I need to build a career in the industry and I love that I go home each day having learned something new.”
The additional funding means that since 2016 the National Garden Scheme will have funded eleven apprenticeships in Botanical Horticulture at the NBGW.
Funding is generated from admission fees at over 3,200 gardens that open for the National Garden Scheme each year. In 2026, 307 gardens will open in Wales, you can find them all here Wales – National Garden Scheme
NOTES TO EDITORS
You can read about Zoe Phelan’s apprenticeship here: It’s the best thing I’ve ever done … – National Garden Scheme
About the National Garden Scheme (also available in Welsh)
The National Garden Scheme gives visitors unique access to over 3,300 exceptional private gardens in England, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Channel Islands, and raises impressive amounts of money for some of the UK’s best-loved nursing and health charities through admissions, teas and cake.
Thanks to the generosity of garden owners, volunteers and visitors, we have donated more than £77.8 million to our beneficiary charities, and in 2025 made donations of over £3.8 million. Founded in 1927 to support district nurses, we are now the most significant charitable funder of nursing in the UK and our beneficiaries include Macmillan Cancer Support, Marie Curie, Hospice UK, Parkinson’ UK, Carers Trust and The Queen’s Institute of Community Nursing.
The National Garden Scheme doesn’t just open beautiful gardens for charity – we are passionate about the physical and mental health benefits of gardens too. We fund Community Gardens and projects that promote gardens and gardening as therapy, and in 2017, we launched our annual Gardens and Health Week to raise awareness of the topic in May each year. Our funding also supports the training of gardeners and offers respite to horticultural workers who have fallen on difficult times.
In 2027 the charity will celebrate 100 years of opening gardens for charity.
To buy our Garden Visitor’s Handbook or find a garden near you visit our website at www.ngs.org.uk