Florida’s Robot Pickers and the Future of Harvesting

Michael Mccoy

Michael is a garden designer, writer, and occasional garden tour leader. He started his adult life as a botanist, then trained as a gardener. Along the way he started writing for The Age in Melbourne, Australia. Amongst a range of undeserved privileges, perhaps the greatest was to hang out with Christopher Lloyd at Great Dixter for the summer in 1991. He can make himself sick with longing, just thinking about that incredibly rich and formative time. Since then, he has most of his time designing gardens, or writing about them for The Age, Gardening Australia, or occasionally for Gardens Illustrated.

Terry Freeman,
Keeper of the roses

Terry began his career at Flemington Racecourse in 1976 as a 16 year old gardening apprentice. Since then, Terry has dedicated his entire working life to roses. When he started in 1976 there were 6000 roses in Flemington’s garden, today there are more than 16,000. Terry was also the visionary behind the Flemington rose arbour, a favourite spot for photos.

One of the highlights of his career was when he sent a Flemington rose to Queen Elizabeth II under the instruction of then VRC Chairman, Rod Fitzroy. A few months later he received a letter from Buckingham Palace thanking him and informing him the rose had been planted in the gardens of the Palace.

Kim Woods Rabbidge

Is a passionate garden writer and garden photographer for magazines and Writer, Editor and Producer for Our Australian Gardens’ DVDs. Kim is also a Freelance Social Media editor and Garden stylist.

Matt Moran

With a career spanning over 30 years in the Australian food industry, Matt Moran has a plethora of awards to his name, TV shows, best-selling cookbooks and ownership of some of Australia’s most celebrated dining establishments. It’s safe to say that Matt Moran is an Australian food icon and a true fourth generation farmer. With a rural upbringing on a classic Aussie dairy farm, his family still runs the property in the Central Tablelands of New South Wales, which supplies beef and lamb to his restaurants. He was the pioneer of ‘paddock to plate’ philosophy in Australia and believes in the importance of everyone understanding the origins of the food being served on their plate.

Jackie French

Jackie French AM is an Australian author, historian, ecologist and honourary wombat (part time), 2014-2015 Australian Children’ Laureate and 2015 Senior Australian of the Year.

Some of Jackie’s books have sold millions of copies and have won over 60 awards in Australia and internationally. Others were eaten by the wombats.