LIVE & LEARN
We all have different reasons for taking a course, but there’s one thing every ‘mature’ student has in common: when we retrain or decide to study a new subject by choice, rather than the ‘enforced’ learning of our school days, we appreciate it so much more. There’s a simple joy to be found just in learning more about a subject you love, whatever the end goal you have in mind.
“It gives you such a sense of reward when you’re taking a walk in a park or garden and you’re able to think to yourself: ‘I know the name of that plant,’” says Bhupinder Sohanpal, who is studying for the prestigious RHS Diploma in Horticultural Practice. For Bhupinder, a former barrister, it was an unexpected illness that set her life on a different course. As she re-evaluated her career following a stroke, a chance encounter with the RHS members’ magazine in a hospital waiting room led her to join the Society’s new community allotment programme.
Through the programme, participants learn all about allotment growing over the course of a year, tending their own
