Horticulture Landscaping, Garden Management and Sportsturf
Join the growing industry!
Our colleges are fully planted with beautiful flower displays, plants and landscape features. We have fantastic, complex glass houses, arboretums, display houses, numerous sports surfaces and fully equipped design studios. Our Landscape Construction Centre is the Training Academy for uK landscapers who compete at European and World level under the supervision of one of our lecturers who is also the uK team coach and an international landscape skills judge. We have access to some of the most prestigious gardens in the uK and there are opportunities for some students to be involved with the various competition show gardens that we build each year. Our teaching staff come from both amenity and production backgrounds, well qualified and experienced to enable learning to be both an enriching and enjoyable process. We are one of the first colleges to have a mini golf course featuring an innovative solar powered irrigation system.
Industry Fact File
The horticulture industry covers a number of sectors and offers a wide range of career opportunities in roles as diverse as landscaping, sports surface management, garden design, advisory work and research. Increasing awareness of green issues is leading the demand for properly trained, skilled workers and managers. Amenity Horticulture covers the growing of plants for ornamental purposes and the maintenance of gardens and grounds for leisure and recreational use. Career prospects range from roles with local authorities, major botanical gardens and heritage organisations to running your own business when you have sufficient experience. Sportsturf and sports surface management are specialised sectors which also offer major career opportunities; the UK has around 3,000 golf courses and 5,000 sports grounds which employ around 25,000 people. Production horticulture includes the large-scale production and selling of plants in businesses that range in size from small private nurseries to major national production organisations.
