Hello!

Welcome to the first of the new land management blogs that I look forward to writing each month – keeping you up to date on what Royal Holloway’s gardening team have been busy doing over the last few weeks as well as the changes, challenges and sights we’ve seen across our Living Campus.

If you keep reading, you might also find a few tips for your own gardens for this time of year.

So, what’s been happening this month…

An unprecedented amount of rain and winds hit Royal Holloway in September causing several tree failures, the damage hitting us was only a week after a reported local tornado in Aldershot! One of the main tree failures was a mature pine that fell onto the Medicine building roof, and there was minimal damage to the building. Thanks to the joint effort of the Estates team and contractors we were able to get this cleared fast, there were an enormous number of pinecones left on the roof to clear. 

The North Quads also experienced a first, as we trialled an automated robot mower for over a week, to test its quality of cut and efficacy. The results were interesting as the technology has developed considerably over the last decade. We’ll be considering whether we’d benefit from moving to this system ahead of next spring.

Toward the end of September, we also started cutting the hay off the meadows, which we have put into our composting system to break down and eventually use again on site. The compost site is actually part of a new pilot we introduced this year, and you can find out more about it on the University’s Environmental Sustainability web pages.

Gardening tip

Now we are entering autumn, its the perfect time to plant spring bulbs, a mix of daffodils and Camassia are an excellent combination that can extend the flowering time after the dafodils from May.

This is also the time to consider cutting back your roses to prevent wind rock over winter, as the seasons are changing and we have often milder winters, the timings of this pruning may vary, last year we had a third flush of flowers that lasted into early December!!

 

All the best,

Dan