University Park Gardens Guide and Tree Walk

University Park Gardens Guide and Tree Walk 1 We are proud of the those from Nottingham Welcome University’s landscaped and East Midlands in campuses and visitors Bloom, the local and 4 Horticultural highlights are welcome to enjoy our National Civic Trust and 9 Millennium Garden gardens, walks and trees. the British Association of 12 Lakeside Walk Landscape Industries. University Park has 14 Tree Walk The Friends of University been awarded a Green Please use this guide 16 University Park map Flag every year since to explore and enjoy Park encourage everyone to 22 Our other campuses enjoy the campus grounds and 2003. We were the first University Park. all are welcome at their events. 24 Green issues University to achieve this. w: nott.ac.uk/friends 31 Tree Walk map Other awards include 2 3 Horticultural highlights University Park is very much in the English landscape style, with rolling grassland, many trees, shrubs and water features. An adjoining lake divides it from Highfields Park, which is managed by Nottingham City Council. Formal displays In the summer the display beds are vibrant with exotic annuals One of our boldest displays and bedding plants. In spring is at the North Entrance they are awash with colour from beside the A52 roundabout. A biennials and spring bulbs. contemporary arrangement of informal beds for annual bedding A second, smaller area of formal is backed by a border of exotic bedding is at the West Entrance shrubs, bamboos and grasses, by the old lodges. In the summer, which add value in winter. These large pots of brilliant bedding are complemented by boulders plants enhance our involvement and areas of cobbles. in Nottingham in Bloom. 4 5 Water features fountains are set among boulders. Next to the plaza between the The park is richly endowed with Pope Building and Engineering water features. At the South Science Learning Centre is a Entrance an informal lake has multiple fountain in a rectangular marginal plantings and a large pool. floating fountain. Outside the Centre for The Millennium Garden includes a Biomolecular Sciences there is a circular pond with an island and 12 formal pond with a geyser fountain fountains that ‘tell the time’. Nearby and nearby a series of three pools a small dew pond acts as a natural with cascades and a fountain. To pond for wildlife. the south west is a chain cascade outside the Humanities Building. Formal ponds with fountains elsewhere include the Chemistry Building’s courtyard, where three Jekyll Garden commissions. It has eight small beds in a formal geometric style The Jekyll Garden is attached to and two long borders. Lenton Hurst, one of the older houses in University Park, and its It is separated from the house by formal design contrasts with more a dramatic rock garden terrace modern layouts elsewhere on the which was restored in 2010 by campus. The house was built for the Friends of University Park and William Player, younger son of gardens staff. The sunken garden tobacco magnate John Player. area beyond was replanted with herbaceous perennials in a Jekyll The sunken garden was designed style incorporating colour and by Gertrude Jekyll in 1911. There seasonal borders. are, however, no surviving plans suggesting it was one of her minor Fountains outside the History Department building, Lenton Grove. 6 7 Building. These old gates originally hung next to the West Entrance gatehouses, when the University buildings were first constructed in the 1920s, and had lain derelict and forgotten for many years. Purely by chance, during their restoration, they returned to yard where they were made. The wrought iron gates. The walled garden is a quiet oasis. Highfields walled garden Spring bulbs Highfields House sits in the centre form the lake. The walled garden is Thousands of spring bulbs, of University Park and was built in now a quiet oasis. Its centrepiece especially narcissus, are planted about 1797 for the Lowe family. is an ornamental wellhead. Seats throughout University Park in a It has a fine old garden with many are set into niches and within a wide range of cultivars. Most are beautiful trees including a huge wrought iron arbour. planted as naturalistic drifts in Tulip Tree and several cedars. grass areas. The earliest to flower Around the house are borders of The garden was replanted in a are February Gold running through exotic and unusual plants. Hidden late Victorian style using exotic the season to the late flowering amongst the laurel shrubbery is plants such as hardy bamboos jonquils. These grass areas are left a curious carved stone object, of and the hardy banana Musa uncut until June and a succession origin and purpose unknown. basjoo. In summer the displays are of wild flowers take over the enhanced by tender foliage and display as the narcissus finish. The house’s walled garden was flowering plants. Two long borders once much larger and ‘filled with are planted with herbaceous In the north-west corner of the vineries, stove houses and exotic perennials in a hot colour scheme. campus near Lenton Lodge an blue flowers in early spring. plants’. It was part of an elaborate area of the native Nottingham Once common in the Trent Valley, estate that ran down to the Stunning wrought iron gates crocus, a form of Crocus vernus colonies of the crocus are now fishpond that was later enlarged to open on to the path to the Trent that produces sheets of pale sparse and endangered. 8 9 The Old Botanic Garden This area near the centre of campus used to have formal order beds to represent the plant kingdom to allow the traditional teaching of botany. Now the garden is a quiet retreat with a number of unusual plants. There is a fine Medlar, Cedars, Ginkgo, Nothofagus and Taxodium. A more recent collection of unusual trees and shrubs will add interest as they mature. Gaps in the berberis hedge give fine views the green roofs of the Lakeside Arts Centre and out across south Nottingham. The Vale of Tears This grassed area to the east of the Visitor Car Park gets its name from a collection of weeping trees including birch, ash, beech and willow. There are also fine specimens of Corylus colurna, the Turkish Oak and Liquidambar styraciflua, renowned for its autumn colour. each autumn grows a group of Queen Anne’s Lace at the edge of The Downs. East of the Vale of Tears is a group Fly Agaric toadstools, whose red of Eucalyptus trees, under which hoods denote danger. The Downs species of wildflower has grown along with the wildlife that the This vast grassy bowl in the centre meadow supports. of the campus is managed as a wildflower meadow. As acid The biodiversity of this habitat is Dry Garden grassland, it does not have a very important as less than 95% of the county’s neutral to acidic This can be found to the north west of Lenton and Wortley Hall. Excess high proportion of broadleaved grasslands remain and The Downs soil from a building project was used to create the horseshoe-shaped flowering species but in early is a good example of managing the mound with a level ‘circus ring’ centre. The sandy soil has been planted summer is awash with many and landscape for sustainability. with drought-tolerant species such as Cytisus, Hippophae and Kniphofia varied grass flowers. It is cut each and Eucalyptus. There are also island beds of late summer herbaceous year in early July for a hay crop. perennials and prairie grasses. Over the years, the number of 10 11 Millennium Garden The Millennium Garden is a quiet, reflective place for students, staff and the community and was created after a design competition. We regard it as a jewel of University Park. The summer house. Lenton Firs Rock Garden Near to Lenton Firs, one of our University Park, this was cleared older houses, is a sycamore and replanted. A generous woodland, where once slumbered donation allowed us to restore the a semi-derelict summer house. Edwardian summer house. Early in 2006, with a grant from the The house was once owned by Nottingham Green Partnership, we the Shipstone brewing family. But started to clear heavy vegetation little else is recorded about the with the aim of improving the summerhouse or what was once woodland. known as the Chinese garden. Around the summer house we Take care when exploring as the discovered an extensive and paths and steps are uneven. elaborate rock garden. Over two years, with help from student volunteers and the Friends of 12 13 Millennium Garden The winners of the competition, informal seating as well as open-air Quartet Design, particularly performances. Twelve sentinel impressed with their vision of clipped yews, reinforcing the time a garden that would appeal to theme, surround the lawn. students. The bold design is based on the theme of time. A central A raised mound with clipped box pathway leads into the garden hedges overlooks the garden and and to a series of interconnecting has views of the pool. The focal circular paths and areas, which point of this feature is a stone form a strong pattern within the sculpture, Flayed Stone, carved by centre of the garden. Peter Randall-Page from a single piece of glacial granite. There is a formal pool with 12 fountains, which ‘tell the time’ and Towards the end of the garden is a steel bridges — set low to create blue brick and turf maze, an ancient a feeling of ‘walking on water’ garden feature symbolising the — leading to a central island. A rooting of knowledge in antiquity.

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