Inside Ludlow Castle: with local food & drink producers, talks & demos, Live Fire Stage, trails and kids’ activities.
Lucy Hutchings
Where: Castle Garden Stage - Castle Gardens
From fashion to She Grows Veg Instagram star
Lucy’s journey into the world of horticulture was not, shall we say the most commonly walked path. Her original career was in fashion and for 8 years ran her own eponymous couture jewellery label, and for many year lived a life that she had thought was her dream. Celebrities such as Cheryl Cole were fans of her work; she made stage outfits for artists like Kyle Minogue, with her designs featured in the leading glossy magazines and her line was sold in some of the world’s best known stores. Faced with the choice of taking the label to the next level or walking away…caught up in a whirlwind existence, she hadn’t even noticed how miserable she was. So, she did the unthinkable, and walked away!
The following years were filled with an array of diverse projects, family additions of her two daughters…but always having something edible on the go! At the start of 2018, in need of some serious distraction from stressful life’s events, it was her passion for growing edible plants that she turned to and has have never once looked back.
She started the @shegrowsveg Instagram account to engage with the global gardening community and retrained in horticulture and garden design, with the original plan of becoming an edible garden designer. However, by the time she finished her training, running @shegrowsveg had become a fulltime job and so ended up with a career in garden media.
The ‘Get Up And Grow’ allotment is inspired by her book and will show just how much food you can grow in a small space and how beautiful that space can be.
Lucy's 'shegrowsveg' Instagram page has amassed about 150,000 followers since the end of 2017 and features pictures of the veg she grows and video gardening tips.
https://www.instagram.com/shegrowsveg