A life-long love of plants and gardens has propelled Wanganui's Kelly Jean Kerr to a top spot in the horticultural world.
She returned from a gruelling two days of competition in Auckland last week with the title of Young Horticulturist of the Year. She gets a beautiful glass trophy, $11,000 to spend on travel, $1500 cash and $1650 worth of garden-related products.
She also got an invitation to visit Bayer's agri-chemical production plant in Germany, and is making other travel plans.
One of the final stages of the competition was "horty sports", where the six competitors from across the horticultural trades raced to complete tasks such as assembling a pair of secateurs and identifying the fruit in six different jams. Ms Kerr was nearly stumped by the first horty sports task, which was tying a diabolical knot. But "big picture" understanding from her landscape architecture training and her enthusiasm for the green life won the day overall.
She said she'd like to see more green spaces, plants and flowers, and more people interacting with them. Amazing work was done in Wanganui in earlier days, but she said it was now lacking in places.