About Me — Peter Miles. Sold my marina house, bought a small…
By: Peter Miles
Tags: Introduction, Training, About Me, Trees, Climate Change

About Me — Peter Miles

Sold my marina house, bought a small apartment in the city. I prefer minimalism and also its on higher ground, climate change. Peter Miles Follow Dec 10, 2020 · 4 min read

Hello my name is Peter, I’m in my early 60s and started publishing on medium in July 2020. I have spent my working life employed in environmental work. I’ve been fortunate to have had work and been able to study, also to have had different jobs and career roles.

Like Quy, my parents were migrants, actually I’m a migrant and was 8 months old when migrating from England to Australia. My parents were looking for better economic opportunities after WWII and better weather! So, I appreciate the drive to succeed that many children of migrants feel, trying to make worthwhile what our parents did for us.

One of my first jobs was with a landscape gardener named Brian, we were driving through the suburbs and he was telling me the names of all the street trees. I was so impressed. How do people know these things and how do they remember so many plants? He was studying horticulture at night school, I thought I’d better study as well.

Eventually I went on to manage large plant propagation nurseries, growing local indigenous species as seedlings for revegetation; then seed collecting for direct seeding revegetation, sowing the seed into the ground by-passing the nursery process; I’ve worked in conservation and land management for many years, organizing revegetation projects on farmers properties and have held horticulture lecturing positions at several training organizations.

Author helping school children plant local species using the dryland planting technique, into ripped lines in compacted soil. A very old Allocasuarina verticillata, drooping sheoak, is in the background. Image by author.

I have found with training adults, what they need most is confidence, particularly young adults.

And sometimes you have really rewarding moments. I remember one angry young man screwing up his plant identification exam paper, part way through the exam. I gently took it from him, smoothed out the creases and read through the questions he had attempted, then said to him quietly, these are correct, keep going, and he did.

One lady I saw after a course had finished, proudly showed off a detailed landscape plan she had drawn for her own garden; you taught me to do this, she said.

If you ever have the chance to conduct some training or give a talk, say yes, you won’t regret it, it can be quite satisfying. Don’t worry about being nervous of public speaking, everyone feels that, mostly audiences are friendly; what they want to hear is a story, use that to teach. See my article Safe Pesticide Handling.. Safety warning — Always read and… | by Peter Miles | Medium, true story.

Author facilitating guest speakers at Sophie Thomson’s Open Garden weekends. She is an ABCGardeningAustralia TV presenter. Image by author.

For the last 20 years I have run my own environmental contactor/consultant business. In recent years I decided to update my qualifications, went back to study and gained a Bachelor of Environmental Science degree; it wasn’t easy but well worthwhile.

I like to believe we are on this planet to help each other.

As babies and very young infants we help ourselves, this is nature’s way of ensuring our survival. Then as young children hopefully we learn to help the family and help around the home.

As we grow, we may learn to help others at school, at work, in our community. As adults we continue helping others around us and possibly helping our country, through volunteering and our work.

The next step is to help the world and it needs help. That is where medium.com is useful, for all of us writers we have a means to deliver our information, to provide the joy of a story or to uplift with a heartwarming or humorous tale, to help whoever reads it around the world. This is why I write and publish on medium.

I would encourage you to write and publish, even if you haven’t written anything yet, write your thoughts down, someone will relate to your writings.

My article with the highest number a ‘views’ by far is C3, C4, and CAM photosynthesis.. Is C4 Rice the next Green Revolution? | by Peter Miles | Medium. I wrote that thinking a handful of plants-people might find it interesting, but not the most popular article. If readers found my photosynthesis article worth reading, they will certainly read yours!

Thank you for reading this far and thank you to About Me for providing the opportunity.

Also, now when I drive down the street, I know the names of the trees, mostly!