Tutor: Gwenda Kyd
Date: Tuesday 29th April 2025
Time: 10:00 - 13:00
Cost: £40
Location: Classroom

In this history course, we will explore the medieval view of illness – what were the causes of disease thought to be? What diseases were common? Who did you go to if you got ill and how did they diagnose you? Our main focus will be on the plants involved in the prevention and treatment of disease. Today, some of these plants have proven medicinal benefits and other uses and a few are still used in herbal medicine. Is it possible that, in some cases at least, medieval medics really did have the right idea? Weather permitting, we will also visit some plants used in medieval medicine that grow in the Garden.

Tutor: Natty Mark Samuels
Date: Friday 2nd May 2025
Time: 10:00 - 13:00
Cost: £40
Location: Classroom

Heliconia Serenade is the title of an interactive reading by Natty Mark Samuels, author of The Encyclopedia of Rootical Folklore: Plant Tales from Africa and the Diaspora. It will include participatory chanting, poetry, dialogues, riddles and other brain teasers.
Rootical Folklore is the neologism for his celebration of African and Caribbean Folklore through flora. Rootical, because of the first syllable and its obvious connection to plants; and the whole word, meaning seed or root of an idea. The reading will include pieces about soursop, mango, breadfruit, baobab, pineapple and ackee, among others. Heliconias grow in the back garden of his father, in the village of Cambridge near Montego Bay, Jamaica, generating visits from the Mango Hummingbird.

Tutor: Sally Francis
Date: Tuesday 24th June 2025
Time: 10:00 - 13:00
Cost: £40
Location: Classroom

Saffron is the dried stigmas of an autumn-flowering crocus called Crocus sativus. It is a hugely valuable spice with a fascinating history. Saffron is used around the world to flavour food as well as being used for dyeing, perfumery and in herbal medicine. On this half-day course Sally will introduce you to the history of the cultivation of this fascinating flower and teach you how to get the best from this precious spice in your cookery at home.

Tutor: Twigs Way
Date: Saturday 5th July 2025
Time: 10:00 - 16:00
Cost: £80
Location: Classroom

Taking the ‘long view’ on the garden’s relationship with nature this one-day course will reach back into garden history, before turning to examine the present-day contexts and future issues within which we garden. Encompassing discussion of the cross-over between visions of historic landscape and gardens within movements of ‘romanticism’, ‘picturesque’, and ‘wild’, we will go on to examine understanding and usage of modern terms including ‘wildlife friendly’, ‘re-wilding’ and, crossing to land management, ‘regenerative’. We will also consider the impact of changing climate and disease patterns, and managing the balance between past, present and future visions of heritage gardens,landscapes and current design.

Tutor: Twigs Way
Date: Friday 19th September 2025, Friday 17th October 2025 and
Friday 14th November 2025
Time: 10:00 - 13:00
Cost: £120
Location: Classroom

This exciting series of three sessions will explore the interplay between fashions in garden design and planting, textiles, fashion and culture more broadly. Focusing on the English experience but including the influence of trade and contacts more widely, we will use both images and texts to explore this cultural interplay between inside and out, chronologically in monthly sessions, commencing with the Medieval and Early Tudor and running through Elizabethan and Early Georgian.

Tutor: Charlot King
Date: Tuesday 23rd September 2025
Time: 10:00 - 13:00
Cost: £40
Location: Classroom

Plants have featured heavily in fiction, whether celebrating their beauty or being used to poison in murder mysteries! This course will celebrate murderous plants in a selection of stories. From Shakespeare’s plays to Colin Dexter’s Morse, and in between, we will explore deadly plants featured, as well as some story-telling skills.

Tutor: Laura Mayer
Date: Wednesday 26th November 2025
Time: 18:30 - 20:30
Cost: £30
Location: Online

Humphry Repton (1752–1818) ambitiously styled himself as Capability Brown’s successor: the century’s next great improver of landed property. Developing a new aesthetic, which he termed ‘Ornamental Gardening’, his landscapes were laced with flowers and crammed with exotic features. Immortalized in Jane Austen’s novel Mansfield Park, Repton turned his hand to everything from ghoulish garden mausoleums to George IV’s seaside palace, Brighton Pavilion. His famous Red Books – illustrated to help his clients visualize the potential of their properties – did much to encourage an appreciation of landscape aesthetics during the Regency period. This course will trace his career from its picturesque beginnings to the progressive Gardenesque style, which both made his name and changed England’s relationship with nature forever.