Osborne (English Heritage)

Osborne is Queen Victoria’s and Prince Albert’s Garden at their seaside home on the Isle of Wight. The garden consists of pleasure grounds with shrub and herbaceous borders, and many stately trees. The gardens were laid out by Prince Albert and the main objective in the garden is to restore, develop and maintain it to reflect its appearance during Queen Victoria’s occupation. Many of the plants that can be seen in the garden today were originally planted by Prince Albert, giving them great historical significance.

The formal areas of the garden extend to around 50 acres with the whole estate some 350 acres. There are Italianate terraces with large scale seasonal bedding displays. These are changed twice a year, with the team planting up to 20,000 plants over five weeks. Today, the historic design of the bedding on the terraces has been reinstated using plants introduced to Britain before Queen Victoria’s death.

Swiss Cottage, the royal children’s garden, is laid out with small plots where the children grew fruit, vegetables and herbaceous plants. There is an orchard, wildflower meadow and a collection of hollies. The walled garden, restored under the Contemporary Heritage Garden Scheme, has an acre of flowers for cutting and fruit trained in various historic styles. It also houses two display glasshouses and a cold frame containing seasonal collections of bulbs and parma violets. In addition, Osborne has a small nursery with 3 glasshouses, polytunnel and standing-out grounds. Osborne also has around 100 acres of meadow and a similar amount of woodland.

Trainees will get an introduction to everything typically found in a large Victorian garden (except large scale vegetable production), including propagation, seasonal bedding planting and maintenance, shrub border maintenance, herbaceous border maintenance and cultivation. They will also undertake fruit pruning, turf care, glasshouse management, composting, and a small amount of woodland/estate work. Trainees will experience using a range of machinery and will typically operate pedestrian lawn mowers, hedge trimmers, strimmers, tractors and trailers (under supervision until qualification gained), leaf blowers and vacuums, scarifiers and aerators.

Placements available: Two

Staff numbers: 8 full-time horticulturalists; 1 part-time; 2 HBGTP trainees and 65 volunteers

Ease of access: Osborne is 1 mile from East Cowes, where Red Funnel ferries from the mainland dock. The bus links on the island are excellent, and there is a train station at Ryde Esplanade, 7 miles away.

Accommodation: Advice can be provided on local accommodation, but none is offered on site.