Profile

I used to be a secondary science teacher and did this for 17 years and I have changed to being a plant inspector this year. I do miss teaching but not all the marking! I love visiting all the different beautiful places when inspecting for example Snettisham Woods and Sandringham. In my guitar lessons, I am currently learning The White Stripes’ ‘we are going to be friends’ and I have been playing some Ed Sheeran and Coldplay songs. I am quite slow at changing chords but it is fun to learn this instrument. In my choir, we sing lots of different songs and we warm up with nursey rhymes like ‘what do you do with a drunken sailor’! My dog likes to walk me, instead of the other way around! She loves running in the woods and swimming in the sea when we go to the beach! My cats mostly sleep and tell us to feed them and play with them.

As well as going to farms and garden centres, plant inspectors also visit the ‘wider environment’ to check for pests and diseases. For example, if we are inspecting a wood, we will check the oak trees for oak processionary moth which can be very irritating for humans and animals. We also take water samples to check for diseases like brown rot. It is quite fun throwing a bucket into the water but you have to remember to hold tight to the rope at the end! I love my job as every day is different and I work with a lovely team. This oak tree was planted by Queen Victoria and luckily did not have any oak processionary moth caterpillars.

I am an ‘inland’ inspector which means I do not work at a port/ airport. These places get a lot of imports from other countries which need to be checked carefully so that new pests and diseases do not end up in this country. In my role, I work with clients across norfolk. Most of my clients are farms, nurseries and garden centres and some of my team work with seed companies and universities.  There is not really a ‘typical days’ as every day is different and also the work varies according to the season. So, in spring and summer, we do a lot of inspecting garden centres and nurseries. In autumn, we do ‘wider environment’ surveys where we check woodlands and parks and take samples from river water near farms. In the winter, I mostly inspect produce like potatoes and parsnips on farms that are going to be exported. Sometimes I work from home as I am working though online training modules and I get to travel for training too. For example, in the summer I stayed in York for a few days to learn how to identify trees using their botanical names.  I really enjoy the variety and learning new things. This is a photo of some carnivorous plants, pitcher plants, that I inspected (very carefully) at a garden centre.  If an insect or small mammal falls into them, the plant can dissolve them and use them for nutrition!