LILIES - RHS Lily Group

The International Lily Registrar
Kate Donald was appointed to the post in 2006.
Here she introduces herself.
EING A PART-TIME REGISTRAR enables me to mull over knotty registration issues
Bwhile
working on the croft. It didn’t take long to conclude that however
much I wittered on about horticultural training and experience, sooner or later
I would have to confess that lilies have not, up until now, loomed large in my
career. Daffodils have. Daffodils still do. Spring is a juggling act between
trying to name some of our 550 stocks of pre-1930 Narcissus cultivars, which
have hitherto defied identification; working on lily registration; growing fruit,
vegetables and flowers, and maintaining the hedges and boundaries which
protect our 3½-acre croft.
Ever since I enjoyed spectacular success with mignonette over 40 years
ago, I have gardened. I remember the excitement when Lilium ‘Enchantment’
brandished its exotic flowers in our suburban garden. I was stony broke
throughout childhood, spending all my pocket money on plants from Perry’s
Hardy Plants Farm.
A 40-hour week of manual labour – plus evenings taken up with practical
demonstrations, plant identification tests and projects – came as a bit of a surprise
to a 16-year-old used to a modest school day, but the two-year certificate course
at the RHS School of Horticulture, Wisley, has stood me in good stead ever
since. My interest in daffodils was kindled during a scholarship year at Tresco
Abbey Gardens, on the Isles of Scilly, where the scented, multi-headed tazettas
are an important industry. It was a wrench to leave but, having decided on
further horticultural training, I attended the three-year diploma course at the
Royal Botanic Garden (RBG), Edinburgh. One of my favourite areas was the peat
banks, where freckled shell-pink Nomocharis were coaxed into flower. I could
not have imagined that 30 years on I would be strimming rushes on our very
own, much wetter, peat bog.
After Edinburgh, I went into private service as Head Gardener of the original
seven acres of Rosemoor – a post I had to relinquish when I married and moved
away from North Devon. The ensuing 25 years were dominated by my husband’s
career: we lived near Wisley while Duncan was General Secretary of the National
Council for the Conservation of Plants and Gardens; in London when he was
Curator of the Chelsea Physic Garden; near Edinburgh when Head of Gardens
for the National Trust for Scotland, and at Inverewe, where Duncan was Property
Manager. For the first ten years, I found appropriate employment as best I could.
Thankfully, the RHS offered me the post of International Daffodil Registrar.
123