Sarah tells me she is, “the first woman Head Gardener here” at Pembroke CollegeJordan Inglis for Varsity
Walking through the bustling streets of Cambridge, where bikes weave around buses and crowds of tourists overflow the pavements, I can find myself craving the peace and quiet of the countryside. Then I turn right, opening the door to the Porter’s Lodge to find myself in a green oasis, right in the heart of the city. Both tourist hotspots and student back gardens, college gardens boast features from King’s wildflower meadow to Christ’s 200-year-old Wisteria. But such carefully crafted gardens require constant thought, grind and upkeep. In short, they need the green-fingered genius of college gardeners.
It’s 7:30 am, and Pembroke’s gardens team are up and hard at work, long before most students’ alarms. True to my humanities degree, I’m up at the more civilised hour of 9 am, to meet Head Gardener Sarah for a tour of the college’s gardens. For the past four years, Sarah has headed up the six-person team, taking over from the previous head gardener’s legacy of over 50 years. She reminisces fondly on her career, which began at Trinity Hall, before she became deputy head gardener at Trinity.
After 21 years, “I still love coming to work,” says Sarah. She continues, “I didn’t go to university. It wasn’t for me, and I’m glad I made that decision for myself.” When asked how her experience of gardening differed in each college, she contrasts the extraordinary vastness of Trinity, which “you just can’t even get your head around,” with the seven acres of Pembroke. The scale is something which “you can really put your mark on.”
“The Master’s Garden has been transformed into a welcoming space”
Taking over a tired garden surviving on minimal maintenance during the COVID-19 pandemic, Sarah has really left her mark. The Master’s Garden has been transformed into a welcoming space, thanks to Sarah’s hard landscaping and a conscious effort to open up the garden.
The brand new Dolby Quarter offers an exciting opportunity to expand Pembroke’s gardens in a space designed by landscape architect Tom Stuart-Smith. Walking through the three courts, you are greeted by swaying grasses, shrubs and rare and exotic plants like the Catalpa, Holboellia brachyandra and Bupleurum fruiticosum in Chui Court. Blyth Court is dominated by six mature pollarded Lime trees, and the final Ray and Dagmar Dolby Court’s accommodation surrounds a sunken bowling green-style lawn, further enclosed by a vibrant variety of perennials, shrubs and climbers.
Back in the main college site, Sarah gestures to a wall created by dead hedge and sticks, a feature designed to provide shelter for insects and mammals. Pembroke’s gardens are aiming for a sustainable, environmentally sensitive approach. The gardens in this way can act as “green corridors through the city where wildlife can thrive and spread.” As Sarah clarifies, “it’s about the right plants for the right place.” This sounds simple, but actually requires a complicated process of planning seasons way in advance, leaving plants uncut for the winter, perennial planting, and planting evergreens.
“Pembroke’s gardens are aiming for a sustainable, environmentally sensitive approach”
Alongside practical changes, there is a lot of creative license to really make the gardens special. Sarah tells me that they, “just want to put little ‘Easter eggs’, so to speak, for horticulturists all over the garden, and for everyone else, things that feel restful, great for wildlife, and beautiful at the same time.”
The gardens surrounding Red Buildings will reflect its architecture, with red tulips, the red foliage of aces, and a Cambridgeshire red apple tree highlighting its signature colour. Pointing out a plant I’ve sat next to on many occasions, Sarah reveals that it is a pineapple guava, tasting like kiwi, banana and pineapple with a guava texture. Sarah remarks that, “lots of people say that one thing about this garden is that you walk around a corner and see something you didn’t expect.”
As well as being works of art, the college grounds are a home to students, a place where you can wander around in pjs and slippers or grab a coffee with friends on the lawns. Sarah recognises the importance of maintaining this sense of home by “opening up as many lawns as we can.” Moments like seeing a washing airer out on the lawn, someone playing guitar on the grass, and board games enjoyed in the sun are special moments where students infuse the gardens with life. There are many ways students can interact with the garden as well, like the plant-sitting scheme, which saw around 100 plants left in the team’s care over this summer. There is also a herb garden which students can freely help themselves to. Sarah finds students have “a great respect” for the gardens, “they love the gardens here and it’s always written into the plans for the May Ball about how they must respect the gardens.”
The gardeners here keep Cambridge’s beauty alive. Sarah sums it up beautifully: “Pembroke has a green heart. All the buildings are around the outside, and everything in the centre is green. And I think that’s so lovely.”
Varsity is the independent newspaper for the University of Cambridge, established in its current form in 1947. In order to maintain our editorial independence, our print newspaper and news website receives no funding from the University of Cambridge or its constituent Colleges.
We are therefore almost entirely reliant on advertising for funding and we expect to have a tough few months and years ahead.
In spite of this situation, we are going to look at inventive ways to look at serving our readership with digital content and of course in print too!
Therefore we are asking our readers, if they wish, to make a donation from as little as £1, to help with our running costs. Many thanks, we hope you can help!
Comments are closed.