The RHS’s new head of plant health has dedicated his 25-year entomological career to advancing knowledge of garden biodiversity
My horticultural journey began when I was young. I was fascinated when I found caterpillars in the school hedge, asparagus beetles in my mum’s allotment or a vine weevil on the ceiling. My mum is a keen gardener and horticulturist, so I grew up with it, but invertebrates sparked my interest in gardens.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s in Coventry I joined societies and got involved with local entomologists and local ecological recorders. I then went to study entomology in London. Imperial College was the only university that had a pure entomology degree, which they stopped offering in 1994, so I was one of the last people to get on it. I then completed an MSc in applied entomology, which explored how entomology affects our lives and what we can do about it. The main focus was controlling problems in agriculture and horticulture.
After a stint at the Imperial College library, I took a post as a scientific officer at DEFRA, but then a job came up at the RHS as an entomological research assistant. In 2004, the RHS funded my PhD on the lily beetle. I carried out research on the host range and chemical ecology – how the beetle finds its hosts using odour that comes off the plants. Alongside that, I continued to work for the RHS a
