Rukidi quit a lucrative bank job to pursue gardening

Feb 22, 2012

When she steps into a beautiful garden, the first thing she does is get out her camera and take a picture. Then she slowly walks through the garden admiring and feeling the leaves and petals of the flowers.

By Edna Mubiru

When she steps into a beautiful garden, the first thing she does is get out her camera and take a picture. Then she slowly walks through the garden admiring and feeling the leaves and petals of the flowers.

Winnie Rukidi’s home garden is testimony to her strong passion for gardening. A beautiful lawn greets you as you enter the gate, fresh green palms and shrubs line the driveway and potted plants hang atop the verandah.

It is a small colourful paradise in its own right. And this is just as well, because she has put in her all for the last eight years. Considering that she designed the Protea Hotel gardens, you would expect nothing less.

“My father, the late Dr. Bishop Eustace Ruhindi, used to tend the garden at home and I used to help him. My mother too, Canon Beatrice Ruhindi, was good at gardening so I learnt from both my parents,” she says.

Born in Mbarara, Rukidi grew up in Mukono since her father was working at Bishop Turker College, now Uganda Christian University. However, it was at Kyebambe Girls School that her passion for gardening grew even stronger.

“I was selected as a head girl and one of the first things I had to do was select prefects for all the portfolios. I reserved the compound prefect position for myself. We made Kyebambe very beautiful,” she reminisces.

After Kyebambe, there was little action on the gardening front when she went to the University of London for a degree in economics and public administration. Upon completion, she came back to Uganda in 1984 and joined the Uganda Commercial Bank (UCB) as a banking officer. For the next three years, she worked diligently at her job, but gardening kept calling out to her.

In 1994, when she had risen to the position of housing officer in charge of the bank’s employees, life seemed stagnant at the bank, so she decided to quit her job and concentrate on gardening and compound designing.

“Rukidi is extremely thorough, has taste and once she loves something, she puts her entire into it to get the best results. I admire her energy, taste, courage and effectiveness,” her former colleague at UCB says.

“In a society where few people are ready to pay for a compound designer, stepping out of one’s formal employment to do gardening was a decision many considered way off a sane mind, but such was Rukidi’s passion; she followed her heart, and I am happy she is has achieved her dream,” she adds.

 Rukidi says her first client was a friend. “Much as I wanted to earn money from my passion, it was the enjoyment I derived from it that was the major driving force. Gardening was much more enjoyable than banking,” she says.

Rukidi set up a home office and there began the journey that culminated into her authoring a book on garden plants.

“I was travelling a lot and discovering a lot about gardening and in 1991, I felt the need to share all this information with the world. I asked around and a friend told me to approach a newspaper. I started writing a column for Sunday Vision,” she says. 

With this firm platform, Rukidi delved into gardening and sharing information. To-date, Rukidi’s gardening column runs in Saturday Vision.

“As a columnist, you are not told what to write. So I had to think real hard for what to share,” she says.
And Rukidi always came up with something that her readers loved.

“I have learnt to judge my own work before sending it to my editors. I can tell an article that will be a hit and one that will not,” she says.
Her husband Enoch and children Patricia, Philip and Paul are some of her biggest readers. They always give her feedback on her writing or any projects she works on.
 
Writing the book

As she went about her work and writing, someone from All Saints Church advised her to put her writing in a more permanent form. 

“The person lamented that I was a very good gardener, but I was going to die and leave nothing behind,” she says.

This is how the brilliant idea that saw the birth of Rukidi’s book, Tropical Gardening Plants, was conceived.

“With the help of the late Ruth Spriggs, I outlined my chapters and spent six years compiling notes, pictures and other material to use in the book. Spriggs did the first format of the book. Unfortunately, she passed on before the book came to be,” Rukidi says.

“I kept on working and visiting publishers to pitch my idea. However, no publisher seemed to get the idea of what I wanted,” she says.

After a long futile search, she decided to open a publishing house called Simply Paradise.

“Simply Paradise is based at my home and we did everything in that small office. I worked with Christine Atuhaire, the research assistant, and Tony Mwesigwa, the graphics designer, and put everything together just the way I wanted it.

Towards the end of the project, the team grew bigger. Naome Muhanguzi and Diana Namanda came in to help us tidy the book to its final stage. Robbie Kakonge edited the book and gave us the go-ahead to print,” Rukidi says.

“Working on the book was the most exciting time of my life,” she says.

“I wanted something almost perfect and I got it. After launching this one, I want to start on another book.”

However, as Rukidi and her team were celebrating completion of the book and the successful dispatch to China for printing, she suffered a stroke.

Talking about this period makes her emotional and she needs a moment to compose herself. After gaining her composure, she says with a smile: “I am grateful the stroke happened when the bulk of the work had been done. As I recovered in hospital, I would always ask for updates from my team.”

Rukidi is now almost fully recovered and is ready to launch her book on February 24.

For all those that have a project they have been waiting to embark on or a step they have been planning to take, Rukidi says: “Never leave unfinished work. Just get started and have faith that everything will go well.”

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