Renewed Fellowship Program

August 04, 2020

The Garden Club of America and the Royal Horticultural Society

Renewing a long-standing and fruitful collaboration, The Garden Club of America (GCA), Longwood Gardens of Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, and the United Kingdom’s Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) have signed a Memorandum of Agreement to extend The Garden Club of America and Royal Horticultural Society Interchange Fellowship program through May, 2023. The agreement was ceremonially signed at a May 2020 Zoom conference, with the participating parties represented by Debbie Edwards, president, the GCA; Dr. Tim Upson, director of horticulture, RHS; and Sarah Masterson, vice president of education, Longwood Gardens.

The Fellowship began in 1948 as a club project initiated by Hillsborough Garden Club (California) to support a British horticulture scholar for a year. In 1950, the English-Speaking Union offered a reciprocal scholarship for an American student to study in Britain. In 1952, the annual interchange fellowship was adopted as a permanent project by the GCA. Financial sponsorship in the UK has been provided by various institutions, including the McLaren Family. The American scholar was once known as the Martin McLaren Scholar. Now the fellowship is sponsored and administered by the Royal Horticultural Society, and the American scholar is known as the Royal Horticultural Society Interchange Fellow.

Longwood Gardens, with its outstanding international learning and training educational programs in horticulture, works with the GCA to provide the structured experience for the fellow coming from the UK. 

The GCA/RHS Interchange Fellowship is a reciprocal exchange program that fosters British-American relations through the interchange of scholars in horticulture, landscape architecture, and related fields, as well as promoting the exchange of information in the horticultural field. Interchange fellows from both sides of the Atlantic have gone on to become leading figures in the world of horticulture, heading prominent botanic gardens, pursuing horticultural and conservation science, and designing innovative public landscape spaces.  For more information CLICK HERE.

Debbie Edwards, President, the GCA; Dr. Tim Upson, Director of Horticulture, RHS; and Sarah Masterson, Vice President of Education, Longwood Gardens

 

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