About A Bright Prospect

Georgina Bordewich is a professional gardener and Cathy Kitchingman owns and runs her own 1 acre country garden.  The business of ‘A Bright Prospect’ was born out of conversations during lockdown when many of our friends described their desire to engage with their gardens but expressed their lack of knowledge and confidence in doing so.   During lockdown Cathy developed an outbuilding into a beautiful and highly functional potting shed which lends itself perfectly to educational opportunities.  Utilising this and the attached garden, which encompasses curved herbaceous borders, a large pond, a woodland area, a physic garden, a cutting garden and vegetable patch, we now run a range of hands on practical gardening workshops throughout the year.  These courses demonstrate a range of skills, including propagating, pruning, soil care, plant dividing, and basic garden design principles and planning.  Our clients are encouraged literally to get stuck in so that they develop a very real knowledge of how to do these things when they get back to their own gardens. 

While the concept of engaging with nature in order to relax and gain perspective on our crazy world is not a new one, the act of getting out and redeveloping an old garden or starting a new one can seem riven with pitfalls.  Our courses are small so that we can tailor the content to fit exactly what the clients require.  Some of them are specialist courses, focusing on key areas, such as the cutting garden, others are more seasonal, engaging with what needs doing in the garden at any time.  We also offer bespoke courses to groups.  Plants and seedlings from the garden are available to buy at the workshops.

We operate on highly sustainable and wildlife-friendly principles.  Largely organic, we recycle as much as possible, utilise many natural and home made plant tonics, and make as much of our own compost and leafmould as we possibly can.  We dig as little as possible to retain soil structure and avoid destroying beneficial fungal networks, and we work hard to propagate many of our own plants.  All these methods are demonstrated in our classes.  In addition to the cut flower garden we also save and dry many of our pruning to use in floral workshops run in the potting shed by our neighbour and professional florist, Elaine Hadfield. Again these utilise ecologically grown flowers, and biodegradable media.  We are looking into further collaborations with local businesses, such as botanical artists and calligraphy tutors, and our longer term plans include using the potting shed as a community hub.

To this end we are working together with Marie Curie and donating a proportion of the profits from each workshop to the charity.  In addition the garden will open for the first time next year for the National Garden Scheme and the local charity, Dementia Forward, will provide the refreshments on the day.