Cheers, toda oba, & dank u voor alles...

England was the first leg of my journey, and I experienced so many great gardens, gardeners, and landscapes there.I learned so much from Great Dixter. The gardeners there have such a passion for what they do, and it shows. The plant combination's are the most colorful and vibrant I have seen , and the skills and techniques that I learned there have been used over and over again since my time there and has helped make me a more confident gardener. The relationship that exists between home and garden really made itself understood during my time there.
Thank you Christopher Lloyd, though I have never met you, for providing such an opportunity for students, and for cultivating such passionate teachers such as Fergus and everyone else that I met while there. Cheers.

Next leg of my journey was Israel, which was one of the most exhilarating travel experiences I have ever had. Thank you to the British Friends of the Jerusalem Botanical Gardens, for making such an incredible scholarship available to students.
The lessons that I learned there are invaluable, not only to horticulture, but to life as well. I enjoyed the Jerusalem Botanical Gardens, the Dead Sea, the culture and food of Israel, and most of all, it's flowers and the friends I made while living there. The Mediterranean flora has been a very exciting thing for me to discover and learn about. Toda oba!

And then there was the Netherlands, in which my experience couldn't have been cast in a better light....
The experience I had at De Wiersse was the perfect ending to my adventure. As a kitchen gardener, it is satisfying to witness people enjoying what you have grown and seeing the pleasure it brings them. Food will neve be looked at again the same way for me. Being at DeWiersse allowed me the time and space to reflect on the many things I had encountered during the past year, and also to ponder the future. And the people I have met there couldn't have had a more positive impact on how I see things in life. Dank u voor alles.

My time away has been an incredible experience, a period of my life that I will go back to many, many times in my mind. It is bittersweet that it has come to an end, but that doesn't mean the adventure ends now that I have returned home. Now that I must utilize all that learned knowledge and push myself with all that I had encountered that was inspiring, the adventure has just begun.
Thank you for joining me on this ride......
Live well.