When the nice people at Create Academy recently contacted me about reviewing their new course led by Sarah Raven I was not going to say no. I have reviewed a few of their courses now and the quality and value that they offer is impressive. Knowing that the course was by Sarah Raven made it totally irresistable too, it had to happen.
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| photo c/o Create Academy |
I have been a fan of Sarah Raven for quite some time now. I remember going to listen her give a workshop at the Chelsea Physic Garden way back in the day. I remember liking how Sarah explained things simply, carefully and very practical and pragmatic. Fast forward a decade or two and when I was growing flowers for my daughter's wedding I went to see Sarah give a talk about growing cut flowers and how to create bouquets. Again Sarah was practical and pragmatic and explained things in a way even I could understand. Cut flowers and bouquet making were completely out of my experience at that point. So I had no concerns that this online course would be good, Sarah is a natural when it comes to teaching.
Lets cover some basics first. There are 46 lessons and the course costs £147 at the time of writing. You can also subscribe to the Create Academy at £17 a month. The subscription deal impressed me. You get access to all the courses during your period of subscription, in your first year you get 15% discount so you only pay £204 a year instead of £240. If you wanted to take more than one course it would seem to me the subscription deal is a no brainer.
The course itself is broken into workshops that you can pick up, pause, start again whenever you like. There is no time pressure, you have bought it, it is yours. Each workshop comes with downloadable notes so that you do not have to write everything down. This is very useful. None of the workshops are over 30 minutes in length, with most being around 5-15 minutes. This means it is really easy to watch a workshop and then go and do what else you should have been doing; except you won't as one workshop pulls you into the next and the next.
The workshops cover everything you need to know about planning, designing, sowing and growing your own productive cut flower patch. Sarah introduces herself and how she started growing her own flowers. Sarah did not invent the cutting garden, but I think it is very fair to say that she has popularised it and brought it back into the modern eye.
There are sessions on why to have a cutting patch and how to grow flowers in abundance. This latter part is not quite as easy as you might imagine and Sarah talks us through different varieties and now much value you get from them. There is a wonderful chart that Sarah draws up scoring whether to grow peonies, cosmos or dahlias. She looks at the cost per plant, the amount of stems you get, how long the harvest period is, what is the vase life etc. This is a very grounded, practical course. I am going to get hooked into any workshop where someone starts drawing a chart......
We are told how to design your patch for your chosen colour palette and how to work with colour. Then we learn how to create a sowing calendar to grow through the seasons of the cutting patch. Sarah then talks us through her favourite sowing methods. Sarah also explains how to be as sustainable as possible: including how to choose and plant bulbs such as tulips that will encourage them to flower for more than one year.
I really enjoyed this course and learned a lot. I like Sarah's style and the amount of information she almost incidentally passes on is immense. You can always tell when someone is confident in their own knowledge as they are generous with their knowledge: they cannot help but drop titbits of extra information in as they talk to you. Sarah is generous with her knowledge.
I can happily recommend this course.
Sarah Raven's Cut and Come Masterclass is available through the Create Academy.
It sounds like a great course. It's always fun to learn more and compare notes about cutting gardens.
ReplyDeleteGood to know where the course is available, too. :)