Rooted is based in Brighton and Hove and run by me – Paul. I’m a gardener and educator whose work is split between planting and caring for fruit trees and teaching other people to do the same. I provide practical support to help care for trees or plant new orchards and I work in schools and universities to educate young people about growing food and championing their local environment.

Before discovering my love of gardening, I worked as youth worker and then educational partnership manager, accumulating 15 years of experience across non-profit organisations and educational institutions, including the University of London and University of Sussex. When I originally started training to become a gardener, I found that my real passion lay in combining my expertise as an educator and love of working with people, with my enthusiasm for growing fruit trees and desire to create sustainable solutions to the environmental challenges of our times. For this reason I provide the option of working collaboratively with clients around the planting and care of their trees, providing practical tutorials, so that they can be empowered to care for their own trees in the months and years to come. I also offer work through school assemblies, community workshops and corporate volunteering days.

I work one day a week for Brighton Permaculture Trust in their Orchard Team and I’m lucky enough to be the Principle Gardener for 3 of their Community Orchards. This role also involves the management of an Orchard on the Barlavington Estate that forms part of the National Collection of apple varieties from Sussex. The other half of the collection is housed at Home Farm Orchard in Stanmer Park and together they form an amazing living library of heritage apple varieties, some of which are very rare.

In September 2022 I joined the University of Sussex Team teaching on an elective module titled ‘Creating a Forest Food Garden’ as an Associate Tutor for the course I am responsible for teaching undergraduate students how to plant and care for the Forest Garden. The project will develop over the next 5- 10 years but so far we have planted fruit and nut trees, built fencing for tender plants and done some cleft grafting to propagate new trees.

Gardening with a ‘Green’ ethos is really important to me. I try to minimise the environmental impact of my work as much as possible and as such I never use herbicides or pesticides, I order plants from UK nurseries to cut down on travel miles and my vehicle is all electric.