Skilled Gardener Vacancy -Reading

Would you like to join our gardens team as a skilled gardener? We are looking for someone with specialist skills in horticulture, capable of working to a high standard of presentation and with a wide range of gardening skills, including operating machinery and excellent plant knowledge. Ideally, we’d like you to have gained RHS Level 3 qualification in horticulture or be planning to study to this level. We would require PA1 and PA6 and to have a full, clean driving licence.

You would be reporting to the recently appointed Head Gardener and be responsible for areas of the gardens, as well as a team working on wider tasks such as grass cutting, mulching and weeding. We have a long-established reputation as a training garden for people who are starting out in a career in horticulture. So, you will be working with and imparting your gardening knowledge to WRAGS trainees and garden volunteers.

The historic gardens are laid out as a series of walled enclosures round the house, including a Dower House Garden on the south wing and a water garden on the north. Much of the wider garden was created with the help of Esther Merton in the 1960s and includes stunning mature shrubs, trees, rhododendrons, magnolias and camellias. There is an enclosed kitchen garden to the north surrounded by a shelter belt with glasshouses, vegetable beds, fruit cages and a small orchard. As the house has changed ownership over the centuries, there is a wonderful pastiche of different garden styles. The historic Grade II parkland is small (80 acres) with beautiful mature oaks, beech and cedar and a large lake.

What makes this new role exciting is that the gardens need rejuvenation. My first twelve months here, as Head Gardener, are being spent on improving the maintenance to raise the overall standard of presentation. We are working to a costed garden management plan. Procurement of new garden machinery, tools and equipment is underway. Repairing the deer fence (by contractors) and revitalising the kitchen garden to become the powerhouse of the garden’s revival are also in progress. There will be a larger plan over the next few years to remodel areas of the gardens, redesign the planting in the borders and to raise the listing from Grade II to Grade I to be compatible with the house. The C18th Charles Bridgeman designed landscape here is an undiscovered gem that will involve more research to raise its significance.