Warwick district’s garden guru gets national recognition

Now the man responsible for bringing them to their current glory has been honoured with one of the highest accolades of his profession.

Nigel Bishop, who was head of parks and open spaces at Warwick District Council for 20 years, was presented with the Associate of Honour award for his distinguished services to horticulture at the Hampton Court Palace Flower Show in London last week.

He said: “I am absolutely over the moon. Having worked for 46 years in a job I actually really loved and then to receive this is fantastic.”

Harking back to the day when he started at the district council in 1989, Mr Bishop, who was taken on for his experience in working in horticulture, landscape, arboriculture and forestry, said he knew there was much work to be done.

“The parks in the district had really been neglected. It was a difficult task to take on, but somebody needed to do it. Jephson Garden was worn out and needed some tender loving care.”

Two years later, Mr Bishop had in place a 30-year-plan for the Grade II listed Leamington park and he soon got to work on restoring Victoria Park, St Nicholas Park in Warwick, Abbey Fields in Kenilworth, St Mary’s Lands in Leamington, play facilities and nature reserves, as well as establishing the Leamingotn in Bloom competition and a natural woodland burial site at Oakley Wood.

Although Mr Bishop, who has also worked for three other councils, retired in 2009, he still has plenty of horticultural items on his plate. As well as being horticultural overseer for the Shrewsbury Flower Show, he is a national horticultural judge, vice-chairman of the Guild of Horticultural Trade Judges and a Britain in Bloom judge. And of course he is a “very keen gardener” and continues to grow vegetables at his Leamington home.