Cliveden

Location: Taplow, Maidenhead

Website: Cliveden website

As a part of the team at Cliveden, you will work alongside a large group of experienced professional gardeners. The 80 acre formal gardens, built up over the last 350 years, include the Grade 1 Listed 18th century parterre, 19th century annual bedding schemes, early 20th century mixed herbaceous borders, the oriental-influenced water garden, floriferous long grass areas, numerous formal lawns and a recently restored, Jellicoe-designed rose garden.

Within these areas, we are constantly working to develop the plant collections within the gardens, embracing the spirit of our character areas whilst using a greater breadth of species and cultivars to get the very best from our displays.

The property training programme covers a range of seasonal operations across the gardens. These include pruning, propagation, turf culture, planting, maintenance of annual, herbaceous perennial and shrub borders. The training programme also involves a full property induction, off site visits, an additional growing project in our productive walled garden, machinery maintenance, property garden history sessions and several sessions on the principles of garden design.

There has been a lot of restoration work carried out over the last few years and there is still a lot to do.  Many of these restoration projects have involved students carrying out detailed research and practically working on the projects.

We have been hosting HBGTP trainees for a number of years, and with a large team we are able to offer across-team support to a trainee.

Placement opportunity: 1 year

Staff numbers: 10 full-time gardeners; 40 volunteers; 1 second year HBGTP trainee

Ease of access: The nearest station is Bourne End (2 miles away). Taplow and Burnham (3 miles away) also have stations on the main line. All of these towns have shops and other facilities. There are no buses that stop at Cliveden, but it is possible to walk from Bourne End.

Accommodation: No dedicated accommodation available.

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The Trainee Experience

Discover what life is like for our trainees with case studies and comments from past trainees.

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