Horticultural education returns to Dartington with a clear focus on the future

Through the Dartington Certificate in Sustainable Horticulture, Dartington is to revive its proud history of horticultural education, with a new course designed to equip growers with the skills necessary for 21st century food production and gardening.

Learning to grow food in an oil-scarce world is possibly one of the most useful skills any young person could be learning and a significant rise in demand is anticipated in the job market. Similarly, there is an increasing demand for ways to manage heritage gardens that are less dependent on fossil fuels and promote biodiversity.  Dartington is proud to be pioneering this new programme, equipping young people with skills and recognised qualifications for employment.    

The Dartington Certificate in Sustainable Horticulture has been created by a new and exciting partnership between Dartington and Duchy College, ‘Cornwall’s College of the Countryside’.  Duchy College provides a range of further education courses with a strong heritage in practical rural skills fit for employment. This new certificate builds on that experience and incorporates Dartington’s pioneering approach to sustainability.  This course provides an important complement to TTT’s Great Reskilling and puts progressive ideas such as forest gardening and permaculture principles into mainstream education.

The course combines theoretical with practical education as students gain real-life experience working alongside three pioneering horticultural projects on the Dartington estate; the nationally renowned 21st Century Dartington Hall gardens set in splendid medieval landscape, School Farm, a community-focussed market garden developing low carbon growing technology and working to organic standards, and the forest garden around the internationally acclaimed Schumacher College, which is successfully demonstrating the potential for agroforestry techniques, an exciting new development in sustainable horticulture.

The certificate is a Level 2 equivalent to the current National Certificate in Horticulture with the intention to offer Level 3, equivalent to A Level, to successful students for a second year’s study.     The course will be delivered over three days (Wed-Fri) so it is expected to attract interest from mature students, particularly those local to Totnes and Dartington, as well as school-leavers.   

Everyone interested is invited to an ‘advice session’, to be held at Dartington on 20th July where they can visit and experience the various gardening projects and meet some of the course staff.

To register for further details about the course and the ‘advice session’ on 20th July, please email rosewarne.enquiries@duchy.ac.uk or telephone 01209 721321

Dartington Hall Garden - The nationally renowned 21st Century Dartington Hall gardens are set in a splendid medieval landscape. They have been the centre of an experiment in rural regeneration and horticulture since the 1930s and attract thousands of visitors a year.  Wildflower meadows and regenerating orchid populations are among the many features of these gardens that make them an excellent place to learn the skills that will be required by heritage gardeners of the future as we build biodiversity back into our managed landscape and develop ways to grow with reduced dependence on fossil fuels.    

School Farm - School Farm is a community-focussed market garden that is developing low carbon growing technology according to a minimum tillage and low-mechanisation policy and working to bring land back into organically certified status.  Growing food and flowers for a local market by engaging the local community as apprentice volunteers and customers is an essential part of the business model and is paving the way for many emerging market gardens across the country.

Forest Garden at Schumacher College - The Forest Garden around the internationally acclaimed Schumacher College is successfully demonstrating the potential for agroforestry techniques in commercial and domestic horticulture.  Based on permaculture principles, this exciting new development in sustainable horticulture has been pioneered by Martin Crawford on the Dartington Estate.  It has recently been the focus of national media attention as its potential for significantly increasing the productivity and biodiversity of our food production systems whilst massively reducing our dependence on fossil fuels is being realised.