Tutor: Caroline Henricksen
Date: Thursday 03 December 2026
Time: 10 am - 1 pm
Cost: £45
Location: Classroom


Taking winter inspiration from the Garden, come and join Caroline Henricksen for a fun, relaxing and creative morning collaging botanical cards. Caroline will take you through the process she uses to create her botanical collage pieces, starting with you creating your own collage surfaces using paints, foliage, vintage paper, magazines, old books, wallpaper and even toothbrush and paint rollers. Just about anything can be used to collage. Playing with patterns and textures can produce some really interesting and beautiful results. You are welcome to bring in your own additional materials to work with (for example old prints, poems, books) but everything is provided on the day. Just turn up and create!

This workshop is aimed at beginners through to more accomplished artists who want to try something new. Caroline will be on hand throughout to give lots of one-to-one tuition.

Tutor: Maike Dring
Date: Tuesday 10 November 2026
Time: 10 am - 1 pm
Cost: £70
Location: Classroom


Get into the festive spirit with this hands-on workshop exploring the many ways essential oils can enhance your Christmas season. Create aromatic bath salts, a bespoke perfume pulse oil—perfect as a gift or personal treat—and a special festive blend to take home and fill your space with the scents of Christmas.
All materials are provided. Spaces are limited to allow plenty of individual guidance.

Tutor: Emma James
Date: Thursday 12 November 2026 - Friday 13 November 2026
Time: 10 am - 4 pm
Cost: £170
Location: Classroom


Capture the Garden’s rich textures and seasonal colours in this creative two-day printmaking workshop. You will begin by exploring the Garden to gather photographs and sketches. Back in the Classroom, you will transform your images into a linocut design — carving, inking, and printing your work in a single colour. You’ll then learn how to combine printmaking with watercolour painting and tissue paper chine collé to add colour and new shapes to your print.
Materials and some tools will be available to use, but you will need your own set of lino cutting tools, as well as a box or folder to take away your prints.

The course is suitable for beginners as well as those with some experience of linocut techniques. The course requires fine motor skills, including the ability to use a lino tool and craft knife to cut lino.

Tutor: Susie Turner
Date: Wednesday 04 November 2026
Time: 10 am - 4 pm
Cost: £85
Location: Classroom


This one-day workshop will introduce you to the simple technique of monoprinting with leaves. Using collected and pressed leaves from the Botanic Garden, you will learn how to make unique, colourful handmade prints using non-porous plates, a small etching press and artist quality printing inks. There will be opportunities to print onto both pre-dampened printing paper and samples of fabric.

The technique is very easy to learn and no previous experience is necessary.

Tutor: Ros Bennett
Date: Wednesday 25 November 2026 - Thursday 26 November 2026
Time: 10 am - 4 pm
Cost: £155
Location: Classroom


In winter, when there are very few flowers around and most of our native plants have lost their leaves, it is a wonderful opportunity to focus our attention on the conifers – most of which are evergreen and still bear cones. The British flora is remarkably poor in diversity of native conifers, but many introduced species form a major feature in our landscape. And here in the Botanic Gardens at Cambridge we are fortunate to have the opportunity to study a fine collection of this magnificent group of trees. This course is suitable for beginners, including more experienced botanists who have not yet tackled conifers (or tried and failed!) and all those who love trees.

No previous knowledge is assumed.

Tutor: Angie Cano
Date: Tuesday 01 December – Wednesday 02 December 2026
Time: 10 am - 4 pm
Cost: £155
Location: Classroom


Join our Deputy Curator, Dr Ángela Cano, on this two-day introduction to tropical botany. Travelling back in time, you will learn about the dynamic borders of the tropical region, with a focus on the fossil record. You will then study current patterns of geographic distribution of plant diversity on Earth, discovering that it is not homogeneous, but dramatically different between continents. You will fly over the tropical belt to understand which regions have the highest species richness, known as “biodiversity hotspots”, and face the strongest threats. Ángela will then discuss the main factors that threaten this biodiversity and the local and ex situ efforts that are in place to counteract their effects. The second part of the course will focus on plant systematics – understanding how plants have evolved and how taxonomists have classified them. You will focus on different tropical plant groups, starting with non-flowering plants, such as mosses, ferns and conifers and then briefly cover the most representative tropical angiosperm families.

Tutor: Laura Mayer
Date: Monday 14 December 2026
Time: 6 - 8:30 pm
Cost: £30
Location: Online


The aesthetic category known as the Picturesque developed in the latter part of the eighteenth century. Defined by the artist and travel writer William Gilpin as ‘that peculiar kind of beauty which is agreeable in a picture’, it was equally applicable to art, architecture and even music. In the case of British landscape, the Picturesque aesthetes championed a Romantic appreciation for rugged and sublime topography. Through their writings, Sir Uvedale Price and Richard Payne Knight harnessed a growing disdain for the minimal landscapes of Brown and his contemporaries, instead encouraging Picturesque values of irregularity and wildness. This lecture grapples with the paradoxes inherent in a movement which championed unbridled naturalism through the artificial lens of taste, whilst recognising the early role of the Picturesque writers in championing wilderness preservation.