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Old 18-02-2003, 12:55 PM
Rob
 
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Default RHS General Exam...

Hi there -
I'm currently on the RHS General Certificate in Gardening course. I'm going
to our local college, ( not Horticultural ), one morning a week. This is my
second year and last year, I went for a whole day. I take the exam in a
month so revising like mad!!( or not!)
I have thoroughly enjoyed this course but probably gained the most knowledge
from the tutors and other course students, not so much the literature and
home study. You just cant beat snippets of information that pop up whilst
out and about or in the classroom. We have had 2 excellent tutors for the
course and we always seem to go off on tangents, discussing so many related
issues in broader ways. One of our tutors always related difficult to
understand stuff( like botany and the chemical bits), to down to earth
practical applications in the real gardening world and that has been an
effective way to learn too.
All in all, I would never have done this course at home. It obviously
depends on your attitude and what you want to get out of it. Gardening is
after all a practical, hands on subject and we have done things such as
fruit tree pruning in someone's orchard, taking various cuttings from each
other's gardens, been to look at lawn-mowers and other machinery, visited
Kew, the Seed Bank collection at Wakehurst, Wisley aswell as going to a
college allotment and growing a vast selection of veg. and cut flowers on a
plot and a polytunnel.
My course is spread over a year and a half with the option to take the exam
at the end if you want to. everyone in my class is doing the exam and there
are 10 of us.
Hope that helps and gives you some idea anyway about one way of doing
things.
Good luck!
Regards, Liz.