Gardening gave me A NEW START
‘I SWAPPED HANDCUFFS FOR HORTICULTURE’
Susan Main, 47, works at RHS garden Harlow Carr. She lives in Darley, near Harrogate.
On the day I got my job as a horticulturist, my mum, Christine, gave me a mug that read, ‘Lawn enforcement officer’. It was a perfect present because for the past 13 years I’d been a police constable.
Joining the police was not something I’d planned. After studying biomedical science at university, I returned home with no real idea of what I wanted to do.
I applied to be a police special constable. Eventually I made it my full-time job, specialising in working with vulnerable children. It was a fulfilling job, but stress levels can be high and the hours unsociable.
To relax, I began to play with the tiny garden of my terraced house, filling it with perennials and watching it bloom with colour. A
