EDUCATIONAL ESTABLISHMENTS


Ross Bennett and Lee Yearn taking junior school pupils through a lesson


the UK, planted in around 1680 and it’s definitely the largest in the UK if not Europe. It’s just over 40 metres high now and over 10 metres girth. It’s on the National Heritage register and is one of the top fifty trees in the UK, and people come from all over the world to see it. We’ve had people from China, a couple last week came from Holland, some from America and all across Europe and they all want to see it. During the summer, they’ll come and knock on the door and ask to see it - so it’s known worldwide.” “We’ve entered into a project with Barcham Trees to propagate from it, so there is a direct line of London Plane that are coming from it. They are under attack at the moment from a fungus called Massaria which is leading authorities to remove thousands of them in Europe, and now in the UK, so it’s quite important that we promote the species, get the tree noticed and more of them planted.”


“The Sue Ryder Charity (the previous incumbents) had been gone for four or five years before we came in, so it’s obvious


things were going to get out of control. They had a gardener and Ray did a lovely job in there, but when we got control of it, we wanted to put our own stamp on it. Over the last four or five years, every person in the department has had legitimate input into that garden, whether it’s digging the path out, pulling the trees out of the pond or laying some turf - everyone has played a part.” This has also led to a memorial garden within the Palace grounds for ex-governor Clara Taylor (Clara’s Garden) which also remembers other members of the King’s Ely community.


“The tree has got its own problems, and the school has invested in it heavily already. These things come at huge costs, so we’re fortunate that our current chief operating officer, Mark Hart, and the bursar before him, are really on board with what we do and they understand it, so we’re very lucky from that perspective. And it’s not just that tree, it’s all the trees on the site, some of which are hundreds of years old. It’s essential to look after them and educate people about them. We do educational classes with the


junior school, assemblies, do little tours with the nursery children and take them to the yard to plant plants and Chris has done things with them as well.”


“Doing things with the children and showing them the area gives them a new respect for it and they know not to walk under a tree or cut across the lawn and stuff like that. We’ve been lucky, on the grounds side the department got invited into a junior school assembly, and they did the whole assembly on us, and the garden side has recently had theirs. It shows their appreciation for us and shows we’re doing what we do right, which is nice.” The restructuring of budgets following the


Old Palace project has helped the grounds operation be more agile, but it is the investment in machinery that has played the most significant part. When Will first took over, there was a pick and mix of equipment at his disposal and he, along with Chris, has worked at getting a range of machinery that suits the site and allows them to carry out routine maintenance as and when they need to do it.


PC December/January 2020


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