St Andrews Botanic Garden

St Andrews Botanic Garden was founded in 1889 and has developed on its present site since 1960.  The impressively landscaped 18-acre garden holds a fully documented botanical collection of over 4,000 taxa and is a registered garden of national importance. The collection is incredibly diverse and largely organised by habitat, with significant garden areas including rock garden, scree, aquatic and marginal gardens, rhododendron woodlands, European ecological demonstrations, large-scale perennial plantings, vegetable garden and herb gardens. The garden is also developing an exciting new area called the Tangled Bank – which places some of Fife’s most threatened habitats, ranging from dappled meadows and woodland through to dramatic sand dunes, right in the centre of the Garden. This area will form an important resource for plant conservation and research, and an exciting new way to engage with visitors. The garden has full propagation, nursery and composting facilities and associated equipment and systems. The garden has an extensive herbarium that is actively used and accessible.

We believe passionately in the ability of gardens to change lives for the better.  We want our Garden to be full of life, at the heart of our community and reaching out to difficult and under-served audiences through our public programming, educational activities and day-to-day operation.

As a trainee at St Andrews, you will gain experience with tractors, trailers, ride-on mowers, strimmers, hedge cutters and other garden machinery. You will be involved in day-to-day maintenance, large-scale development projects and hard landscaping, in addition to plant recording and monitoring. The garden is going through a period of renewal and growth meaning that there are significant opportunities for gaining a range of skills beyond routine horticultural maintenance.

Placement opportunity: 1 year

Staff numbers: 6 full-time gardeners; 30 volunteers

Ease of access: Leuchars railway station is 20 minutes’ drive away, or 25 minutes by bus. Edinburgh Airport is 2 hours’ drive away.

Accommodation: The Garden does not have property of its own but is likely to be able to assist with arranging or providing a room in a family home locally on a commercial basis. As a University town there is extensive property of all types available for rental