Speaker: Kate Burtonwood
Subject – “Plantings and Design at Trinity College Oxford”
For our second get-together of 2024, a group of 50+ MUWAGA members and guests enjoyed an inspiring walk-through of Kate’s work as Head Gardener at Trinity College, Oxford.
A fine set of images showed us the recent development over time and seasons in the college gardens.
For the past three years Kate has been Head Gardener at Trinity College, bringing her team-building and creative expertise to a set of challenging projects at the College.
Kate abandoned her Civil Service career in her mid 30s to follow her passion for gardening and the outdoors. Amongst much else in her career development, Kate worked as a volunteer in gardens near the Inns of Court in London, whilst studying for an RHS Diploma as part of a training pathway which included work at the Cotswold Wildlife Park and the Oxford Botanical Gardens.
Kate’s arrival at Trinity coincided with the end of a building development project for 50+ additional student rooms and lecture halls, and so she began her tenure faced with some challenges around building work residues and structures. Inevitably during these refurbishments, parts of the grounds had been lost or neglected.
Kate described her work with her small, dedicated team around four main areas.
Herbaceous Border
The first of these was a 25-yard long herbaceous border, which had certainly seen better days. In a series of images, Kate showed us the development of the border over time. With knowledge of her team who knew the history of the border, she dug up and split the existing perennials such as achillea, replanted them and, by adding bought-in plants including striking purple dahlias, created an environment of close planting, thus suppressing weeds (especially bindweed) and obviating the need to water often.
Library Quad
In an area called the Library Quad, there was a request to lay the area to lawn and create imaginative planting to contrast. This was achieved with a randomly-spread range of approximately 9,000 bulbs, accompanied by “natural look” effects in what Kate described as a loose matrix-style. Blues and golds predominate – the Trinity College colours – in a meadow effect.
Meadow-Planting
The meadow theme is continued in the next area described by Kate: a small area as part of a building plot. This became a fine display of wild meadow flowers, helped for sure by the poor-quality soil and the creativity of the team.
Woodland Planting
Kate finally described her work in a woodland area, where tons of bought-in mulch and over 1,000 shade loving plants helped to restore the area to a natural look and feel for visitors – the theme of sustainability and regenerative planting never far from the ethos at Trinity.
Kate’s talk stimulated much interest among the group, as evidenced by possibly a record number of questions in the Q and A which followed. Subjects included the possibility of creating compost (lost during building works, but progressing), ability to use walls for climbing plants (tricky with listed buildings), use of greenhouses and whether the work was appreciated by the students!
Visiting the Gardens
Trinity Gardens are open to visitors, and details can be found here