Hello!! This is my first blog entry. I’ve been an apprentice now for almost a month and am having a brilliant time, I feel like a whole world of opportunity has opened up for me.
My apprenticeship is in wildflowers and fungi in grasslands. It’s based in Edinburgh and I’m spending my time with the National Trust and also at the Royal Botanic Gardens.
The last few weeks have been a whirl wind of activity, getting to know the people I will be working with, making contacts, signing up for various courses and trying to cram as many ID skills into my head as possible!
I have two mentors, Lindsay at the National Trust who’s managing their nature conservation team, and Roy Watling a mycologist who’s been studying Fungi for 60 years! I feel so lucky to have this opportunity to learn directly from them, and I feel I have learnt more about fungi and wild flowers in the last three weeks, then I have in years with just me and an identification book!
As well as being in the lab getting to grips with microscopes, to look at and identify the smaller details in a mushroom (there’s a whole other beautiful world through a microscope!) , I’ve also been out and about on Fungi forays, wildflower identification courses and to see some of the National Trust properties I will later be surveying for grassland fungi.
If you’re wondering whether or not to apply for an apprenticeship, I say do it! I never thought when I was applying that I’d end up here and it’s a pretty fun place to be.
This is me doing long distance surveying with the world’s largest binoculars!
